Ten Reasons You Need Fire Door Maintenance

Here are SAB Group’s Ten Reasons You Need Fire Door Maintenance in the UK. We will discuss how to assess fire doors, identify potential risks or dangers, and fix them to lengthen their lifespan and functionality.

Ensure Smooth Operation

Fire doors must have smooth operation in order to function correctly and safely in any building. Fire doors that don’t use smooth operation can compromise safety and evacuation of people within in the building, leading to safety risk and issues with legality later down the line. There must be routine checks done on every fire door to prevent operational failure within the building and maintain safety regulation and compliance. There are two main ways to check your fire doors, including: Hinge Checks and Jamming Avoidance.

Check Hinges and Locks

Fire Door Hinges and locks checks are important in any routine fire door check to ensure safety compliance for usage and potential security evacuations.

 When checking hinges and locks, you should be aware to check for wear or misalignment of screws or other mechanical components that keeps the door in use.

Alongside this, you should ensure that the closing speed of the fire door and the latch engagement meet the safety standard requirements, typically around 5 to 7 seconds. Any early signs of identified operational failure will lead to major security issues and potential dangers for anyone using the fire door.

Avoid Sticking or Jamming

The fire door should not stick or jam during usage, as this can cause much danger to any surrounding people in evacuation scenarios. Sticking and jamming of the door can lead to the door becoming unmovable and may present further issues if left undealt with.

To test if your fire door is sticking or jamming, you can monitor the door alignment relative to the frame, and if they misalign, the door will need to be re-aligned correctly or need a replacement. Another way to examine its smooth operation and function is by lubricating the moving parts (such as the fire door latch) to maintain its consistent function.

If you don’t prevent function damage by checking the door alignment and keep the latches or other moving parts consistently lubricated, your fire door may compromise the safety of surrounding people in the building and become a dangerous hazard during evacuation.

Maintain Smoke Sealing

Fire doors need effective and operative smoke seals for categorisation. Any damaged smoke seals will allow smoke to spread within a room, which will increase significant risk to any occupants within the room or surrounding areas. There are regular maintenance requirements that will ensure any smoke seals remain effective during a fire for occupants, reducing smoke and injury to any people within the building.

Inspect Intumescent Strips

Intumescent strips are little strips laid on the outer layer of a door, designed to trap any extra smoke outside within a room. These typically look like a little strip of brushes around a door and feel soft to the touch.

Intumescent strips need to hold the correct placement on the outer side of the fire door in order to work and must be moved or replaced if incorrectly placed. You must also make sure that the material expansion capability of the intumescent strip is intact and ready for any scenarios needing smoke seals. You can check this by performing an inspection for checks of damage to the strip, including wear, paint tearing, or degradation. You should also document wear and tear as it happens, so that you know if an inspection or replacement is necessary.

Replace Damaged Seals Promptly

If you see a damaged smoke seal, you must replace it immediately before a potential evacuation is necessary. You will be able to remove any damaged or compromised smoke seals using the manufacturer guidelines that come with it, as every smoke seal is different and has different guidelines.

Once the seal has been removed from the door, it is critical to replace it with a new smoke seal before any potential fire. The new smoke seal will also need to meet fire resistance ratings and typically fall in either the FD30S (Fire Door 30 Smoke Resistance Minutes) or FD60S (Fire Door 60 Smoke Resistance Minutes) category to be complicit with security measurements.

Stay Legally Compliant

UK regulations require fire doors to be maintained and inspected to avoid potential risk for any people using them. If fire doors are compliant with safety regulations, this reduces liability and insurance risk in case of fire doors needing to be used. Fire door maintenance provides evidence of due diligence for audits and ensure optimal protection.

Meet Fire Safety Regulations

Fire door maintenance is necessary to ensure that they meet fire safety regulations. It is important to make sure that any fire door has certification requirements for usage. Fire door safety complies with the UK Regularity Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005, and verify their compliance with Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022, which states that:

Keep Accurate Records

It is important to keep accurate records of fire door maintenance by logging inspection dates, any unusual findings along with regular findings for updates, and any corrective actions taken to ensure safety. It is also important to provide correct documentation for regularly scheduled fire door inspections and audits.

These are important to keep up to date so that if there are any changes, with the fire doors or management or the building, the correct responsible people will be aware and comply with the safety of UK law.

Protect Lives and Property

Fire doors are, first and foremost, one of the most important needs in any building for correct evacuation and safety. They are a primary device used in line of emergencies, removing building occupants from buildings safely and in compliance with UK law. Maintaining fire doors reduces any injury to people, potential property damage, and overall risks in any scenario. Ensuring that these doors perform correctly is necessary.

Compartmentalise Fire and Smoke

Fire doors help compartmentalise fire and smoke and are necessary in retaining any potential risk to people or property. You must confirm the fire door integrity to prevent fire spreading, to protect lives. In order to do so, you must identify and assess seals, along with structural elements, for effectiveness and usability.

Minimise Property Damage

By reducing fire invasion, you can limit the amount of repairs and potential restoration costs on the damage of your property. It is important to keep fire doors in tact as they will help to reduce any further damage by using their intumescent strips, little bristles that keep excess smoke within, and heavy barriers to block fire penetration. Retainment is necessary in helping restore any damage to a property, which is why fire door maintenance is necessary.

Prevent Costly Failures

By keeping up with regular fire door maintenance, you will not only reduce cost when there is an evacuation procedure, but you will be able to reduce any unexpected breakdowns. This early detection will be able to prevent an escalation in minor issues which may result in larger issues in the future.

By keeping up to date with any potential risks or hazards with your fire doors, you will be able to keep a longer functioning lifespan of your fire doors, reducing the need for any replacements or big repair later on.

Early Problem Detection

In order to hold a longer lifespan of your fire doors, you should first keep regularly scheduled checks on any worn hardware, warping of the door or frame, or damage to the door itself and its components, such as the intumescent strips around the outside of the door.

By implementing preventative intervention, you will have a longer lifespan of your fire doors and reduce any significant and preventable injury and damage to building users and the building itself.

Extend Door Lifespan

By maintaining operations standard practices and checks on your fire doors, you will be able to promote a longer life and reduce the risks and costs of added checks to your building in the future. You will also be able to reduce any full replacements with smaller repairs and checks, lessening the cost of a professional and new parts.

Minimise Fire Risk

The most critical aspect of minimising fire risk in any building is fire doors. They slow the growth of fire and contain it. Maintaining fire doors in a proper state ensures that compartmentalisation functions best, and this minimises the direct danger to property and people.

Performance of Compartmentalisation

To ensure that fire doors are operating as they should, you have to test the fire door resistance rating, i.e. FD30 or FD60. This is important in relation to the duration that the door can resist fire. You need to ensure the door is properly installed and fitted into its frame, since a poor fit will prevent the fire door from functioning.

Minimise Risk to Occupants

Fire doors should be ready at all times to function in such a way that they provide sufficient time for people to evacuate safely. Unless they are kept in good condition, then that time is lost, and lives can be lost. Fire doors should also be incorporated into the whole fire safety system, i.e. alarms and means of escape, so that people are appropriately safeguarded when there is a fire.

Meet Industry Standards

Fire doors must be serviced to industry standards at all times. Regular servicing ensures that the FD rating is current and the doors remain compliant with British Standards. This means that you are meeting industry procedures and the doors will operate correctly in the event of a fire.

Meet BS and FD Ratings

You should always ensure that fire doors meet British Standards. This means that the FD rating, whether FD30, FD60 or higher, is suitable to the use and requirements of the building. It is important for compliance and safety reasons.

Ensure Certification Remains Valid

Fire door certification is sustained as long as there is maintenance on a regular basis. This includes having periodic inspections and confirming installation and maintenance procedures have been carried out correctly. This keeps them compliant and maintains certification.

Benefit from Professional Fire Door Oversight

With trained people installing and servicing the fire doors, it ensures that the work has been done to the proper standard. It minimises risk with compliance and ensures that fire doors will perform as required when needed. Professional supervision provides you with assurance that it has all been properly done.

Certified Fire Door Technicians

Fire doors need to be installed and serviced by qualified engineers. This minimises the chances of errors and ensures that all the conditions for conformity are fulfilled. Having trained professionals ensures everything is to standard and prevents unnecessary risk.

Peace of Mind with Fire Door Technicians

When you have experts perform fire door maintenance, you have the guarantee that they are able to perform the task. That lowers liability, provides safety, and keeps you assured that doors will function when necessary. It also simplifies handling the building because one of the biggest risks is addressed.

Save Money Over Time on Fire Doors

Regular maintenance of fire doors is less expensive than replacement doors in the future. When you maintain them, you eliminate the possibility of huge repairs and save money in the long run. Maintenance is a way of keeping you financially efficient as well as secure.

Prevent Major Replacements

When issues are identified early, they can be fixed before they become much larger problems. This prolongs the life of the door and its hardware, so you do not have to spend money on complete replacements. Checks keep faults from becoming costly.

Lower Insurance Costs

Proving that you are maintaining fire doors in proper condition can also reduce your insurance premiums. By proving that you are minimising risks, you are often able to reduce your premiums. This is another advantage of fire door maintenance, both in the sense of safety and cost savings.