The 5 most common fire door faults

In the UK, fire doors are mandatory in buildings such as hospitals, care homes, libraries, civic centres, schools, universities and, indeed, all public use buildings and residential buildings of multiple occupation. The body for monitoring the presence and, just as importantly, the effectiveness of these fire doors, is the FDIS (Fire Door Inspection Scheme).

It is widely acknowledged that compartmentation is probably the most effective means of providing fire safety and preventing the spread of a fire outbreak, and this aspect can be seriously compromised if your fire doors are not in perfect working order. Recent findings from the FDIS reveal alarming statistics from their inspections, with an average of 3.7 faults uncovered for each door inspected, suggesting that, in the majority of UK buildings, the fire doors are not truly fit for purpose!

Here are the five most common faults uncovered through the inspections:

1. Smoke or fire seals missing
2. Excessive gaps around the door
3. Incorrect or unclear signage
4. Damaged door leaves
5. Unsuitable or poorly fitted hinges

Smoke or fire seals missing

All internal fire doors, and commercial doors, should be fitted with intumescent seals – these expand with the heat in the event of a fire outbreak, therefore effectively blocking any gaps around the door frame and preventing the spread of smoke and fire into adjoining areas or rooms. Over 61% of the doors inspected were found to have seals either missing, incorrectly fitted or not filling these perimeter gaps properly, therefore rendering them ineffective in their use.

Excessive gaps around the door

When internal fire doors are installed, they have to fit correctly within the door frame – this means that there should never be a gap wider than 3mm at any point between the door and its’ frame. This can be easily measured by testing the gap with the width of a £1 coin. The inspections showed that 34% of the doors tested had gaps in excess of this measurement.

Incorrect or unclear signage

This may seem insignificant in fire door safety, but accurate and clear signage is important – in the event of a fire, people need to know exactly which doors are fire doors, where they are and how to access them. If fire doors are not clearly signed, then people can leave them propped open or block access to them without realising that they may be endangering the safety of others. Over a third of the doors inspected had either incorrect or insufficient signage. 

Damaged door leaves

Damaged doors will not provide the same protection as those in perfect condition. Fifteen per cent of the doors inspected revealed damage to the door leaves.

Unsuitable or poorly fitted hinges

Again, one those aspects that you may not initially think important, but correct and properly fitted door furniture, such as hinges is vital to the overall safety aspects of the doors. Every internal fire, or commercial, door must have at least three hinges, all with correctly fitting screws present – missing screws can compromise the strength of the door under the intense heat generated by a fire. Inspections showed almost one in five doors had unsuitable hinges.

To correctly protect residents and users of these buildings, these doors must be checked regularly and, if any of these aspects are compromised in any way, they must be reported to the relevant person within the building!

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