Hooks holding for doors open

[Guest GarthW]

I would value your opinion on hooks that hold open fire doors. There are two sets of doors at either end of an entrance corridor in our church. This corridor is a busy thoroughfare and also used as a "disabled" entrance. To facilitate use of the doors hooks have been affixed which enable the doors to be held open. I would welcome your thoughts on the pros & cons of this. Looking forward to hearing from you.

[Safelincs]

Hi Garth

Fire doors are only helpful if they can stop the spread of fire. Being held open with hooks will stop them doing that. To be able to hold a fire door open legally, you need to install a fire door retainer. A simple retrofit retainer that allows the door closer to close the fire door in case of a fire is for example the Dorgard.

Harry

[FireRiskPro]

Hi Garth, just to give you the possible outcome of not managing fire doors, an enforcing fire safety officer could prosecute if a designated fire door is held open by anything other than a fire alarm activated device. Dorgard is a solution, however, if the fire door is on a "critical escape route" (the only way out of a building) then it may only be held open with a hard wired alarm activated device following a risk assessment.

The fire risk assessment is the cornerstone of all things fire safety within your premise & should have considered any high volume doors that may be habitually held open illegally, if you have not done so I would recommend that you have your assessment conducted professionally, it costs less than you think & will give you a good grounding should you wish to conduct your own assessments in the future.