Maintenance on fire doors.

[Tom Sutton]

I have an enquiry from a contractor who has to remove a number of fire doors for maintenance. Some of the doors will be off for a day and a night and rehung the following morning. The premises will continue to function and the doors will need to be available. He asked if there is some kind of fire resistant material that could form a curtain, similar to the sheets of plastic you see in warehouses that allow the forklift trucks to pass through or some other means of sealing the door opening that allows access.

I am not aware of any such device and other than replacing the doors with temporary doors and conducting a fire risk assessment on the doors to be removed and then see how it will affect the means of escape. Then look for measures that would reduce the risk to the lowest possible level.

[Auntie LIn]

I think whatever you do, you're on a hiding to nothing.

If there are alternative routes avoiding the door opening I suppose you could block it up while the doors are being dealt with.  

The trouble with curtains etc. is that they flap nicely in the breeze which will probably accompany a fire.

If the door openings are all of the same size you could do a rolling programme, removing one door and replacing it with a temporary one which could be moved on to the next location once the first door was refitted, but it's a long-winded way of going about things.

I'm slightly concerned that doors are being removed for "maintenance".   This implies that they've been quite badly damaged and need a lot of work.   Question - would it be cheaper just to fit new doors?