Temporary fire doors are a critical and fundamental element of fire safety on construction sites and often come with certain problems you may encounter throughout a project. These problems may make the doors become uncompliant and the site unsafe, as the temporary doors must meet guidelines.
Here at Selo, we take pride in educating the market on the industry best practices, to help our customers achieve safe and fire compliant projects.
One question we get asked constantly is ‘What common problems do Temporary Fire Doors have?’
With huge amount of expertise around Temporary Fire Doors, we have come up with the top 5 common problems below.
Procurement of the Fire Door System
It’s so important to procure a complete, compliant, and coherent fire door system that is suitable for the application, the environment and the substrate that it’s going to be installed into. Too often, we see fire doors assembled using components from several different suppliers and even with the best intentions, there is still such a high risk that the fire door once installed isn’t compliant. All the components need to be designed, tested, and certified to work together.
Installation
It’s critical the door installation is done by a competent and professional individual. You can have the best temporary fire door in the world but if it’s not installed compliantly, most likely, the door system is not certified.
Environment Exposure
It is so important to understand the environment the temporary fire door will exist in. Now construction sites notoriously have a high moisture content, have extreme temperature variations, and therefore, timber (which is a common material for timber fire doors) will be affected by that environment. Absorb moisture and swell or dry in a very hot environment and then shrink. These are characteristics and things that happen to doors that warrant them non-compliant.
Lack of Robustness
Looking at the big picture, the environment, and the duration the temporary fire door will be in. Often, doors are on site for months if not years. Therefore, if using a FD30 temporary fire door, often, the robustness of that door isn’t sufficient for that duration. So, we suggest you consider using an FD60 door or a steel door.
Maintenance
They do require maintenance and attention to ensure they maintain to a compliant condition for the full duration and we like to call this TLC . So, you can install a perfect temporary fire door but ensure it remains compliant. It is important to make sure you have that maintenance program in place to give you confidence that your sites are safe.
It is important to consider all these problems before installing a temporary fire door and come up with a plan to reduce these problems to maintain fire compliance throughout.
Check out Tempus Temporary Fire Doors, maintaining compliance throughout multiple construction sites.
