Fire Doors in schools

[Guest Deb Layzell]

Hi if a school was built in 1980's and the fire doors do not have intumescent strips do we have to fit them to the existing doors to meets reg's now.

[Mike North]

The addition of seals to the door is a modification to the door

The door was designed and constructed to function without seals, by adding seals you have taken it away from the specification, either live with it or replace the doors.

I would have thought that apart from cross corridors and stair wells there would not be many fire doors in the school

[AnthonyB]

If you are using a competent fire risk assessor with schools specialist experience they should answer this for you. The rather useless Government risk assessment guidance on it's own isn't sector specific enough and largely rehashes the content of the commercial offices and shops guidance and should be used with reference to the contemporary school fire safety design guidance called BB7 and current guidance called BB100.

Very few doors in schools do need to be self closing or kept locked shut fire doors, usually cross corridor doors, stairs (if protected), those in dead ends, and to high risk areas such as science, food technology & design technology classrooms and associated stores/technicians rooms and electrical cupboards, boiler rooms, kitchens, kiln rooms, etc.

The life safety risk in a normal school is usually quite low for during the school day, elevated slightly by extra curricular and third party usage and a sympathetic approach often being suitable.

I can't give you a definite yes/no as I haven't done the FRA, but it's not an automatic yes (note that whilst life risk is low, property loss risk is high and you may choose to modernise beyond the legal minimum for this purpose)

 

[GaryH]

On 28/01/2021 at 20:26, Guest Deb Layzell said:

Hi if a school was built in 1980's and the fire doors do not have intumescent strips do we have to fit them to the existing doors to meets reg's now.

Similar question

Primary school built 1999 has identifiable Fire doors in most areas but not the classroom doors.

Classroom doors open on to a corridor with no dead ends, a sprinkler system is installed throughout the school building.

These doors have no closers fitted and no strips/seals to frame or door.

Do they require to have both fitted to be compliant?, can adhesive backed strips be retro fitted to door  frames.

Thanks, hope you can help.

[Neil ashdown]

The fire risk assessment for the school should be clear about where fire doors are necessary.  It would be expected that a school built to regulations in 1999 would have fire doors installed at the fire safety critical locations. 

Looking at risk from fire at the school, does the classroom need to be a fire compartment?