Why Do Buildings Need Fire Door Inspection?

How much attention do you pay to your fire door inspection schedule? Can you say with certainty that you’re not in breach of fire safety regulations? If the answers to those questions aren’t ‘plenty and ‘yes’, you definitely need to read this blog post on fire door inspection and maintenance. 

A fire door isn’t ‘just a door’. It’s a specially engineered piece of equipment made to demanding safety standards, for very good reason. Choosing a quality product from a reputable, certified supplier is a great first step, but your responsibilities don’t end there. 

It’s up to you to arrange fire door inspection regularly, ensuring they are always in good condition. You must also keep a maintenance log, assigning all doors a unique reference number to avoid unintentional mistakes during maintenance visits.  

Let’s look in detail at the ways in which regular fire door inspections and maintenance save lives

Fire Doors Slow Down the Spread of Fire and Smoke

Given the protective powers of a fire door, it’s a shame that so many are neglected and poorly maintained or viewed as just part of the furniture. Ignore them until they’re needed, and it may be too late. 

Imagine yourself in a burning building, desperate to escape or protect yourself until help arrives. Smoke travels faster than fire and if you’re unfortunate enough to be trapped in a burning building, it’s likely that the only way of protecting yourself is behind a fire door. Remember, deadly toxic fumes can incapacitate a human in seconds. 

During the fire door inspection, your fire door technician can let you know if your doors need replacing or repairing to bring them up to recommended safety levels.

Fire Doors Maintain a Physical Barrier Between You and Injury

As you know, a well-maintained door stops smoke and fire reaching the occupants of a building. How does it do this? Let’s look at the components of a fire door in more detail.  

All aspects of a fire door (which make up the fire door ‘unit’ during testing) must be constructed of appropriate fire-retardant materials. This includes the: 

• door leaf (the part which swings open and shut) 

• door frame 

• fire or smoke seals (seals line the edges of a door) 

• hardware (hinges, closing devices, handles) 

Fire Doors Sub-divide Buildings into Compartments

In the fire safety industry, we refer to passive and active fire protection systems. A simple example of active fire protection is a sprinkler system. We use the term ‘active’ because it describes the change in state of the sprinkler system when fire is present, from off to on. 

Fire protection equipment which doesn’t change state, such as a fire door, is thought of as passive fire protection. 

A fire door doesn’t visibly ‘do’ anything, but it still has protective qualities. One of these is its contribution to compartmentation (one of the core principles of passive fire protection).  To ensure that your building is well protected you need timely fire door inspection for your building.