Certified and Approved Fire Doors
When choosing fire doors for your business or domestic premises, it is really important to make sure that the investment you make is worthwhile. Fire doors play a vital role in preventing the spread of smoke and fire by containing the blaze in a single, isolated compartment of a building. This limits property damage to that specific area, as well as protecting people within the premises from the smoke and flames, allowing them to escape safely while waiting for emergency services to arrive.
Because of the part that fire doors play in controlling the spread of fire, it is particularly essential that they are purchased from, and installed by, a reputable company. A useful way to ensure that the doors you buy are manufactured to a high standard is to make sure the doors are certified by a third party, to guarantee good quality and reliable design.
The certification awarded to fire doors can cover the following key elements:
- The design of the door
- How well the door performs under extreme circumstances that simulate real fires
- How the doors are manufactured
- The level of quality at every stage from manufacturing the doors to installing them
- That all door parts that are produced in the same range are made and fitted consistently, so that if a door or component has been successfully tested, others in the same line can also be reliably understood to carry the same quality assurances.
The fire door set in its entirety must be tested and certified, because without its component parts being subject to scrutiny, the door leaf alone cannot be guaranteed to work successfully and live up to its rating. Certification and testing that is carried out on an ongoing basis can also provide extra reassurance to consumers and businesses, as this can demonstrate that the high quality standards are not a one-off.
In the UK, fire door sets are subject to assessment under either BS 475: Part 22, Methods for determination of the fire resistance of non-loadbearing elements of construction, or BS EN 1634, Fire resistance tests for door and shutter assemblies, Part 1, Fire doors and shutters. How well the door assembly is able to withstand the onslaught of smoke and prevent its escape is tested by measuring the leakage of air around the door, using the BS 476: Part 31, Methods for measuring smoke penetration through doorset and shutter assemblies or the BS EN 1634: Part 3, Smoke control doors.
Each door that is tested is checked under multiple configurations so that safety is assured whether it is used as a single-acting or double-acting door, or whether it is installed as a single or double leaf. Any time the construction or installation of a door is changed, tests are normally carried out again, to ensure that they offer the same protection as they had done in their previous state.
When a fire door has been certified it will have a label affixed to it which can help to identify it should it ever become necessary to trace the supply chain. The label on each door includes the name of the manufacturer, the door’s certification number, the rating the door received, and a unique serial number.
