Fire doors are an essential part of fire protection in your business. They work as passive fire protection by helping to hold back a fire. This is useful in two ways. Firstly, it can protect evacuation routes. This allows your employees to safely exit the building and avoid the areas where the fire is present. Secondly, the fire doors can block the path of the fire which gives the emergency services more time to safely rescue any employees trapped in area of your business.
What Are Fire Doors Made Of?
Fire doors are made of a number of materials. These include timber, steel and gypsum. This selection of materials is created in order to create a barrier against a fire. Fire doors will also have additional features such as intumescent seals, smoke seals and fire-resistant glazing. These will all add to the fire protection that a fire door can office in your business.
What Are The Fire Door Regulations?
Commercial buildings are required by law to comply with the RRO. This is the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005. The requirements of the RRO fall to the owner of the building or the building manager to ensure that all fire safety principles are upheld. This ensures that both people and assets are protected in case of a fire in the building.
How fire doors you need in your business will be down to the size and nature of your business. For example, a small building with a simple fire escape route may not require fire doors. Meanwhile, buildings that are larger or taller may require a number of fire doors in a certain arrangement to ensure the safe exit out of the building for employees.
The requirements of fire doors in a business set out in the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 state that a building should have “appropriate means of escape in case of a fire”. There is no set number or specific guidelines. This is why we would recommend calling our commercial fire safety experts.
We can complete a fire safety review of your business. This will help you understand how many fire doors you need in your business. It will also layout where they need to go and why. We can then order and install your fire doors for you.
