Does doors between two buildings have to be fireproof?

[Guest AlexWatt]

We have a holiday let and live in a house next door. The let has a front and back door. In addition, there is a passageway connecting the two houses with two doors, installed in 2004. Question: do these connecting doors need to be fire safe? How do you check that they are fire safe if there are no apparent certifications on the doors themselves?

[Tom Sutton]

The simple answer to question 2 is you can't it is all about risk assessment and you need to have experience in this field. There are clues that may help for instance, the thickness of the door, the weight, the number of hinges, usually three, are intumescent and smoke seals fitted, is there any fire resisting glazing fitted but the only certain way is to have some form of documentation, labels or plastic plugs.

Check out http://www.firesafe.org.uk/fire-doors/ for more information.

[Tom Sutton]

Question 1 there is a requirement to have 60 mins fire resistance between the two occupancies and two FD30 would achieve that. However this question requires the expertise of a building control officer and you should confirm my reply with a BCO.