Why Do Fire Doors Matter?

Fire doors are an often overlooked but integral fire safety measure. Their main purpose is to delay the spread of fire and smoke within a building by maintaining the fire resisting properties of the room’s structure - this is a concept called ‘compartmentation’ and is essential in ensuring both life safety and property protection.

Not all doors need to be fire doors and the exact locations in which they’re required varies by building. Generally fire doors are needed in rooms where ‘high hazard’ activities take place, such as plant rooms or commercial kitchens due to the increased risk of fire starting in these locations, as well as to provide protected escape routes and places of relative safety for building occupants. This helps to prevent designated escape routes from becoming impassable due to fire or smoke spread, and in the case of the latter, provides a safe place for occupants to either wait for further assistance or simply ensures separation from the area affected by fire and smoke where long escape travel distances are present.

Another key role of fire doors is in forming protected compartments where simultaneous evacuation (i.e. all occupants leaving at once) cannot be undertaken safely. This is often the case in care homes and other medical environments where it is not practicable to safely evacuate people from a property promptly or without additional assistance due to their physical or mental health. It is common place for multiple compartments having 60 minute fire resistance to be formed, including with appropriate fire doors, and occupants relocated at least two compartments away from the location of a fire; this is called progressive horizontal evacuation.