Old fire doors

[Guest Sarah]

HiI, 

Do fire doors with mainly glass in them have to be renewed? It’s in a school and we have been told it doesn’t meet the standards required as the doors are 40years old. Also can draft excluders at the bottom of the door be used to reduce the gap?

 

[Neil Ashdown MAFDI]

There is no mandatory requirement to replace fire doors just because they are old.  However, the suitability and condition of fire doors must be sufficient to meet the necessary fire and smoke compartmentation requirements to suit the fire strategy at the building. 

Consult the fire risk assessor on this subject and be prepared to upgrade or replace fire doors where necessary. 

[AnthonyB]

On 16/06/2023 at 09:53, Guest Sarah said:

HiI, 

Do fire doors with mainly glass in them have to be renewed? It’s in a school and we have been told it doesn’t meet the standards required as the doors are 40years old. Also can draft excluders at the bottom of the door be used to reduce the gap?

 

Are these cross corridor doors or enclosing stairs?

[Guest Sarah]

Hi, thank you for your reply’s they are on corridors.

 

 

[AnthonyB]

Their main purpose is to provide smoke control, particularly on longer corridors, so they need to be suitably smoke sealing. Just because they are 40 years old doesn't in itself mean they are no good and can't be remediated - I work with several schools with large legacy estates and lots of doors (many of which in schools don't actually need to be fire doors) and if they had to automatically replace every door set in one fell swoop they'd go bust. 

A good FRA will detail which doors are a priority, which doors need to even be fire doors under schools fire safety guidance and a good fire door contractor will be able to remediate doors depending on the nature of the issues rather than take a pass/fail/whole new doorset required limited approach many who have entered the trade in the last few years are constrained to.