Intumescent strips.

[nearlythere]

Date : 20/10/08 Wood Green Crown Court

Fire Service : London

Penalty : 4 months imprisonment (Mr Parlak) and £21,000 fine (company)+ £8,800 costs.

Defendant : Parlak and Watchacre Properties

Summons 6 – Article 14 (2)(a) – Failure to ensure that persons were able to evacuate the premises as quickly and safely as possible, in that the escape route was not properly protected (because the intermescent strip and cold smoke seal were missing from the top edge of the second floor habitable room and there were combustible materials stored in the exit route including a washing machine, television, clothing and furniture).

Where does this fit in with a FRAer accepting a fire door without the intumescent strips and smoke seals fitted.

[messy]

It probably means that the 'FRAer' will be OK as long as (in this case) someone doesn't die in a fire within that building which brings out the local FS team with their legal notebooks and magnifying glasses to go over the FRA and building in the finest detail.

[jokar]

A BS 476 part 8 door does not require S&S but a new door to BS 476 part 22 does, let us not confuse the two things.  As I have said before I am not fully convinced that retrofitting a part 8 door with S&S is legal as far as the test certificate is concerned.

[AnthonyB]

We do not know the full details of the doorset in question to make a judgement.

I would hazard it was a doorset where a strip & brush is an integral part of it achieving FD30S and it was either never there, or was removed/damaged as oppose to a perfectly serviceable old style door with a rebate that only had had some extra seals put on it.

A door with a tight fit in a 25mm rebate wasn't designed to have a strip & bush retrofitted, it was designed to work as it is - if you need the protection of a seal & brush then the doorset as a whole should go rather than mess around altering an existing functional door and depending on who did it, make it worse.

If it's a functional rebated door in good order. tight fitting & effective then I only put it down for replacement at refurb  unless the area is high risk (e.g. sleeping) - it's not viable to spend tens of thousands in one go for the sake of it, we need to be proportionate to the risks present.

[Chris Houston]

Where does this fit in with a FRAer accepting a fire door without the intumescent strips and smoke seals fitted.

But did they?  Did the fire risk assessment conclude that a lack of intumescent strips was OK?

[Brian Catton]

I suspect that this prosecution was more about the combustible storage and obstructions in the escape route rather than the door seals.

if the combustible items had not been present there would not have been a fire.

I think we need a little more info Chris. Was the door modified was it new, had it been certified,
Sounds typical LFB to me but then I do not have the facts.

[nearlythere]

The point I want to make is that the provision of intumescent strips and smoke seals does not necessarily make a door better at withstanding heat and smoke.
Surely one property of a door is that it can withstand the passage of heat and smoke not that it is fitted with the above.
If I had a fire door with a half inch gap all around it would not provide the necessary protection and fitting intumescant strips and smoke seals will not help.
It's a little like saying that a car must be fitted with a steering wheel whereas what the car must be is steerable. Of course this is usually done by fitting a steering wheel but a steering wheel is of no use unless it is linked to the front wheels. Fitting a steering wheel does not necessarily make the car steerable.

It is obvious that the interpretation of what are effective fire safety in the courtroom is in its infancy and any good barrister would have blown this charge out of the water had they experience in or an understanding of these matters. It also illustrates the inexperience of magistrates who determine what the standards should be based purely on the opinions of the F&R Services as it is assumed they are the ultimate experts.


I have just had a look at Art 14(2)(a) and it has nothing to do with protection of escape routes. In fact the more I look at it the more defects I see.

Summons 3 – Article 13 (1)(1) – Failure to provide appropriate fire fighting equipment.

1,   There is no Article 13 (1) (1).

2,   There is also no requirement to provide appropriate fire fighting equipment.
      There is a requirement to provided, to the extent that it is appropriate,  appropriate fire fighting equipment.

Either the clients barrister was really a plumber or the client rolled over and begged for mercy or there has been a missprint somewhere along the line.

[Morri]

Looks like he pleaded guilty!

http://www.london-fire.gov.uk/news/NewsReleases2008_210ct08.asp

[colin todd]

When a large met fire and rescue service in one of the worlds capital cities used to have senior officers who could spell fire safety, an ACO who I very much liked and respected got his fire safety team leaders together and asked them to give him one example of a fatal fire in which the fact that the door was a BS 459-3 door had any bearing on the outcome of a fire. Apparently, they all shufffled their feet and averted their gaze. He told them until they could give him an example, their minions were not to go around like atomatons demanding upgrading of BS 459-3 doors. As it happened, we had shortly before appealed a section 5(4) notice for a sleeping risk that required upgrading of the doors, which auntie lin had said were equivalent in fire resistance to a BS 459-3 door. Well of course, auntie lin cut no ice with the macho ADO of the F&RS in question. Who is she, quoth the ADO and how would she know. See, auntie lin is only a woman, bless her, she doesnt chew gum and she can barely reach the pedals of  a red HGV, never mind double de-clutch it, and well, the ADO had been practising fire safely (badly, and practising being the operative word) for three whole years!! Well, we pointed out that the F&RS had a guidance note that said if a door met the test standard at the time it was constructed it was to be accepted, and auntie lin was sure it would meet 30 mins to BS 459-1. The ADO said there was another guidance document that said fire doors had to meet BS 476-22 for 30 minutes. Well what with auntie lin just being a woman, etc, clearly this was all  no good to macho man, so at great cost to the client, we had a sample tested to BS 459-1 (being perverse enough as I am to getting a copy of the old standard and furhishing it to the test lab). Guess what, the door did 30 minutes. (Obviously a lucky guess on the part of auntie lin, cos remember she cant send a stop message.) Anyhow, a week before the magistrates court hearing, we received a letter from the F&RS basically saying they didnt like auntie lins doors but that they had decided not to come to Court to tell the lady with the flowery hat and local butcher why. (They, like me, would have loved auntie lin to bits-though not in the Biblical sense- and I expect the lady with the flowery hat and she could have discussed knitting and recipes after the case.) Alas, there is never any continuity of learning in that F&RS, so we all go round the circle time and time again. And Messey wonders why I get frustrated.

[Midland Retty]

I suspect that this prosecution was more about the combustible storage and obstructions in the escape route rather than the door seals.

if the combustible items had not been present there would not have been a fire.

I think we need a little more info Chris. Was the door modified was it new, had it been certified,
Sounds typical LFB to me but then I do not have the facts.

Hi Brian - I agree with you.

It wouldn't have been the issue of strips and seals alone that saw the defendant found guilty.

[SmokeyDokey]

If you read through the summonses as reported (rather than trying to pck holes ina pres notice) then there seems to be a pretty clear cumulative effect. The courts don't send people down for a missing IS.

[CivvyFSO]

When a large met fire and rescue service in one of the worlds capital cities used to have senior officers who could spell fire safety, an ACO who I very much liked and respected got his fire safety team leaders together and asked them to give him one example of a fatal fire in which the fact that the door was a BS 459-3 door had any bearing on the outcome of a fire. Apparently, they all shufffled their feet and averted their gaze. He told them until they could give him an example, their minions were not to go around like atomatons demanding upgrading of BS 459-3 doors. As it happened, we had shortly before appealed a section 5(4) notice for a sleeping risk that required upgrading of the doors, which auntie lin had said were equivalent in fire resistance to a BS 459-3 door. Well of course, auntie lin cut no ice with the macho ADO of the F&RS in question. Who is she, quoth the ADO and how would she know. See, auntie lin is only a woman, bless her, she doesnt chew gum and she can barely reach the pedals of  a red HGV, never mind double de-clutch it, and well, the ADO had been practising fire safely (badly, and practising being the operative word) for three whole years!! Well, we pointed out that the F&RS had a guidance note that said if a door met the test standard at the time it was constructed it was to be accepted, and auntie lin was sure it would meet 30 mins to BS 459-1. The ADO said there was another guidance document that said fire doors had to meet BS 476-22 for 30 minutes. Well what with auntie lin just being a woman, etc, clearly this was all  no good to macho man, so at great cost to the client, we had a sample tested to BS 459-1 (being perverse enough as I am to getting a copy of the old standard and furhishing it to the test lab). Guess what, the door did 30 minutes. (Obviously a lucky guess on the part of auntie lin, cos remember she cant send a stop message.) Anyhow, a week before the magistrates court hearing, we received a letter from the F&RS basically saying they didnt like auntie lins doors but that they had decided not to come to Court to tell the lady with the flowery hat and local butcher why. (They, like me, would have loved auntie lin to bits-though not in the Biblical sense- and I expect the lady with the flowery hat and she could have discussed knitting and recipes after the case.) Alas, there is never any continuity of learning in that F&RS, so we all go round the circle time and time again. And Messey wonders why I get frustrated.

paragraph

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1.  one of several distinct subdivisions of a text intended to separate ideas; the beginning is usually marked by a new indented line 

verb
1.  divide into paragraphs, as of text; "This story is well paragraphed" 

[nearlythere]

If you read through the summonses as reported (rather than trying to pck holes ina pres notice) then there seems to be a pretty clear cumulative effect. The courts don't send people down for a missing IS.

The holes I was picking SD where in the report in LF&RS web site.

[SmokeyDokey]

A fair point NT, it isn't the best press notice I've ever read but I think it still shows the cumalative effect.

[Auntie LIn]

Hi chaps - I've been off line for a while so have only just picked up on this thread and like every bosy woman before me, feel the need to throw in my three-penn'orth.

Jokar - sorry, chum, you're wrong.   Pt 8 doors did (and still do) need fire seals to enable them to pass the test.  Pt 8 was the standard which required a positive furnace pressure and showed up the need for something to bung up the gaps around the door edges.   And - why are you still talking about Pt 8?   Didn't that float off with Noah???

Nearlythere - you're right that seals don't make a door withstand fire and smoke in one sense, but they do make an awful lot of sense if you're trying to protect an adjacent area from the spread of fire.   Smoke seals stop the spread of cold and medium temperature smoke which can be important as smoke spreads through a building (are you all still with me?   Do you want me to give the full or potted Auntie Lin's lecture on fire doorsets?).   Fire seals fill the gap around the periphery of the door and stop the spread of fire that way.   To my knowledge there was at least one authority which thought that its building bye-laws could be complied with by a four-panelled door where the panels had burned away completely by about 15 minutes BUT THE STILES, RAILS AND MUNTINS WERE STILL THERE!!!   They therefore deemed the door not to have fallen from its frame, so it had stability!   Sorry folks but the politest thing I can say about this is that they come in pairs, and they bounce!
Any door will give a measure of protection against the spread of fully developed fire - it may be 3 minutes or 30.   What probably will make the difference to whether you protect life and property is whether you can stop the fire getting through.

Toddy - just read your post, and I'm SHOCKED that there's a man in the fire service who doesn't know me as I'm 5'7", 38GG blonde bombshell with an IQ of 120! (in my dreams!)   I read what you said about me, and it just goes to show how selfish you boys are with your toys.   Of course the boys in the pretty yellow coalscuttles are not going to let me play Firewoman Samantha - they might find out I'd give 'em a run for their money.

- get your numbering right.   I said BS459:  Part 3.   Part 1 is only fit for garden sheds.

- I wouldn't waste my time teaching magistrates to knit or cook - I've got my work cut out passing on all my best recipes to you!