Fire outburst continues to threaten the security of home even in modern buildings. This is why the government has regulated the use of certain safety equipment and pre-regulated evacuation plans to be included in every modern construction as a pre-requisite constraint.
Every building, be it commercial or residential needs to have emergency exits for safer and faster evacuation in case of fire accidents. Traditional wooden doors do not meet this requirement as they can catch fire themselves and block the exit way. This is why fire-rated doors are important to provide better fire resistance to homes and human lives.
Fire-rated door installation – The regulations
You cannot install just any fire-rated door. There are certain a regulatory permit that such a door should ensure that it is safe and beneficial during fire accidents. The doors with regulatory permits have passed many resistance tests which ensure that it meets all the safety protocols.
Some of the permits that a fire-rated door should have are:
- NFPA 80 permits allow annual inspection of all protective openings so that replacements can happen timely.
- NFPA 101 is necessary for doors that are installed in emergency exit pathways.
- NFPA 105 ensures that the door provides additional smoke protection as well which is very essential to provide safe pathways for evacuation.
There are other state-specific codes that one must check and abide by before installing a fire-rated door for their home or residential buildings.
Knowing The Features of Fire-Rated Doors
Before installing a door that provides fire and smoke protection, you must know what specific features make for such safety doors.
1. What Makes The Door Resist Fire:
- A timber door is treated with specialized make them fire-resistant.
- Even some specialized glass materials are used to make fire-rated doors.
- These doors are covered with an intumescent seal at the edges to prevent any smoke from escaping to the surroundings.
2. Correct Placement Is Important:
- In homes, the fire-resistant door has to be placed at high-risk zones like the kitchen and other rooms containing numerous electrical devices.
- For buildings, residential or commercial, stairways, emergency exits, elevators, lobbies are some areas that need fire-rated doors.
3. Door Specifications:
- Check for specifications like the time it provides for safe evacuation before the door itself catches fire.
- Other than that, providing smoke resistance is very essential because deaths due to fire accidents happen by smoke inhalation in the majority of cases.
4. Maintenance To Provide For It:
- The door which is installed for safety reasons needs annual reassessments to check if every part is in proper working condition.
- All the components and hearth partitions need to undergo compulsory combustion tests as per regulations.
- You also have to keep the certificate requirements for fire doors up-to-date.
- The vision panels should get proper access to light so that emergencies can be viewed properly and get timely actions.
- Thus, a fire-rated door has additional maintenance requirements which are essential because it is an important safety mechanism for your homes.
Some Fire Protection Alternatives To The Doors
If you feel that a fire-rated door will be non-appealing and will ruin the entire aesthetics of your house, you can get these alternatives to the doors without compromising on the safety:
- Fire-rated curtains can be kept rolled unless they are needed. Hence, they become unnoticeable and can be installed even in an open-space design.
- Some stairways and lobbies can also benefit from the installation of these regulated curtains that provide fire and smoke resistance.
- Even partitions are available that are fire-rated and these partitions can be added to any traditional sliding door system.
Be sure to look for a supplier with top quality HDB fire doors to be installed in all HDB homes. A verified door that is fire-rated can be installed in your home or residential building to provide greater exit times during fire emergencies. There are usually 2 of such categories of fire doors. The typical wooden and metal can be customized to fit in your house and provide approximately 30-60 minutes of extra evacuation time.
Keep your options open, stick to the regulations, and provide additional safety nets to your home, office, and even public buildings to safeguard not just human lives, but also to prevent material damage today!
