In light of the recent Grenfell Tower fire

Its always the way, horse, stable, bolted ..... my company and I'm sure others across the UK are sending out messages to staff starting something like this....

Dear Colleagues

"In light of the recent Grenfell Tower fire in London we are carrying out a review of Fire Safety to identify any areas we could improve on"

Here's a start

1hr Fire Door ... I don't think so

I was Manager at a Partitioning company back in my distant past and involved in designing a partitioning system including fire tests on various components including doors, so have some knowledge in the area of fire and fire tests.

Fire safety is a can of worms and just because a door, for instance, is supplied with a fire rating certificate, doesn’t mean it has a fire rating if its installed incorrectly. Doors and leafs are particularly difficult to get through a fire test and get a certificate. Adding vision panels only exacerbates the problems. Also every bit of door furniture cuts into the integrity of the fire stopping abilities of the door and has to be put back.

I had a quick look at one door in our building which on a stair well should be 1hr fire rated. I found three initial faults (there may be more I didn’t look that hard).

Faults as noted on the picture above

1. Intumescent strip continuity has been broken at top of door which is worst point.
2. Flush bolts should be bedded in intumescent paste.
3. Hinges should be fitted with intumescent strip under both blades.

I wouldn’t bet on the door above lasting longer than 15mins before integrity failed at top of door and fire crossed over to other side.

The problem is this isn’t unusual and these type of faults can be found all over the UK. Installers only get asked to provide a fire certificate to cover the type of door installed, not the installation and I have rarely seen flush bolts or hinges fitted on site with intumescent paste or strip. Also how long the installation will last in a fire depends on the skill and attention of the person that fitted it.

At a previous place of work, the IT Department was situated at the end of a corridor with access in and out, down this same corridor. The wall on the corridor side should have been 1hr fire rated construction. Unfortunately over the years someone had fitted a glass sliding hatch into the wall. That means the integrity of the wall has been broken and a hatchway of this type would last a maximum of approximately10 Min's before fire crossed over. I pointed this out several times until eventually they got a fire officer down to look at it. He said it was fine. Go figure.

The problem is it takes something like Grenfell before people start questioning. History shows its only noises in most cases not much actual action will happen.

In the case of blocks of flats the profile has been raised to high on the back of many unnecessary deaths and changes are being made. But there will still be corners cut.

Time will tell as it has a habit of biting back.



Links
http://www.firesafe.org.uk/fire-doors/
http://www.firesafe.org.uk/fire-doors/