Share Why You Should Consider Fitting Internal Fire Doors in Your Home
If you're planning to fit a new interior door or multiple doors, whether just sprucing the place up or as part of more extensive renovations, it might be worth including fire doors. There are some areas where a fire door makes real sense as a safety precaution, to protect your home and its occupants in a fire emergency.
Topics:
- What is an Internal Fire Door?
- Are Fire Rated Doors a Legal Requirement in Private Homes?
- Why Consider Fitting Fire Doors in Home Renovations?
- Where to Fit Fire Doors
- How to Fit a Fire Door
- Home Fire Door Design
- Fire Door Hardware
In this article we’ll take a look at internal fire doors for the home, what they are, reasons to consider them and what’s involved in fitting them. But let’s begin with a definition.
What is an Internal Fire Door?
Internal fire doors are designed to withstand fires for a set period of time, commonly rated at 30 minutes (FD30) or 60 minutes (FD60). They slow the spread of flames and smoke to provide valuable time and a viable route to evacuate.
Flame Resistance
Unlike standard interior doors, which are generally made of materials that can be more easily damaged by fire, fire doors slow the spread of flames from within a specific area, allowing valuable time to exit and potentially reducing property damage.
Stopping Smoke
A fire rated door is constructed to not only resist fire, but also includes seals to contain the spread of smoke through tiny gaps around the door and its hardware – smoke can be as deadly as fire.
However, fire protection regulations vary depending on the type of home. It's important to understand when you will be legally required to fit fire doors or not when installing new doors in your home.
Are Fire Rated Doors a Legal Requirement for Private Homes?
In the UK, building regulations mandate the use of internal fire doors in various situations. While there is no requirement for every interior door to be fire-rated, specific rooms within a home should have fire doors as part of the overall safety plan. For example, if a room connects directly to an escape route, such as corridors or stairways, a fire door can be installed to help protect against fire and smoke spreading.
New Build, Tenanted and Public Buildings
But regulations only apply in certain contexts, such as new-build homes, tenanted homes, houses of multiple occupancy (HMO), blocks of flats and public buildings. It's unlikely that your home residence will be bound by fire safety standards regulations, unless you have built your own house, you're a property manager or a landlord. If so, you might want to go deeper into fire door UK rules and regs.
Extensive Home Renovations
If your home renovations are extensive enough to need planning permission, you may need to include some fire doors as part of the planning requirements. Your architect or project manager should be on top of this.
Let's assume you're none of the above. Are you legally required to use fire doors in your home? No. You are not. However, there are very good reasons for fitting fire doors in your home.
Why Consider Fitting Fire Doors?
Let’s face it, unless they're a legal requirement, safety features often take a backseat in consideration during home renovations in favour of aesthetics and costs. But fire safety should be front of mind for any DIY or renovation work, whether you live in a compact apartment or a large, detached house.
Building-in fire resistance in private dwellings is common enough, with smoke alarms, fire extinguishers, fire blankets etc. So if you're replacing interior doors, especially a kitchen door or garage door linked to your home, it's a good opportunity to use a fire door. It could save your life.
Where to Fit Fire Doors
According to UK Government figures, 67% of domestic fires start in the kitchen. And garages often have flammable and combustible substances, such as petrol, gas, oil etc. Given this, fitting fire doors for your kitchen and an adjoining garage, makes good sense.
Also, if you have a larger house it's worth considering fitting fire doors where a door opens onto a hallway or other potential evacuation route in a fire emergency. For example, down stairs rooms that open onto the hallway that leads to the front door.
How to Fit a Fire Door
Fitting an interior fire door in your home is pretty much the same as fitting any new door into an existing frame. Fire doors are heavier duty than a typical internal door, but apart from that they are a comparable size, and look like any other non-fire door.
Another difference between fire doors and non-fire doors are fire tested handles, special fire resistant hinges and intumescent pads to seal the door against the spread of smoke. More on that later. First let's look at what you can expect from internal fire doors in terms of design and style.
Home Fire Door Design
When you hear the term 'fire door' you may immediately think of those large, heavy doors in flats' communal spaces or in public building corridors, with the 'keep closed' signage. But not all fired doors are like that.
There are as many interior fire door designs and style as their are any other internal domestic door. You can fit fire doors in your home without compromising style. And you should be able to find a fire door that fits in with your home's decor.
Fire doors are heavier duty than standare interior doors, but that doesn't impact their look. Home fire doors can be singles doors or double door, in a variety of designs, including laminate, veneered or painted finishes, in modern and traditional styles.
Fire Door Hardware
Although an internal fire door's design style np different from any other internal door design and finish, the door's hardware will be differnt.
Fire door hardware, or door furniture as it's sometime called, is made using the highest quality materials and has undergone rigorous testing to make sure it can withstand fire and the spread of smoke.
Fire Tested Handles & Hinges
As you would expect, fire tested door handles have gone through a testing process to ensure that they can withstand the heat of a blaze for 30 minutes or 60 minutes before they fail. Find out more about fire tested door handles in this dedicated article.
Fire door hinges should bear the UKCA marque and conform to BS EN 1935. They are tested and graded for load bearing capability and use frequescy, with the grading going form 1 - 9. You can find out more about fire door hinge grading here.
Fire Door Hardware Packs
An easy way to make sure you get the right fire door hardware is to buy it all in a single pack. Fire door packs generally include door hinges, door closer, intumescent strip seals and pads, locks, lathces and 'keep closed' signs, which of course are optional in your own home.
Final Thoughts
Hopefully this article will have helped you to decide whether you want to fit a fire door or doors in your home. The benefits are obvious in terms of peace of mind and safety for you and other occupants if a fire were to break out in your home.
As we've seen, interior fire doors look just like any other internal door, with a wide variety of designs, styles and finishes. And buying fire door hardware in a pack will help keep cost down.
For more information about home fire doors view the full range at Hiatt Hardware. Discover a world of DIY home and garden articles and how-to guides like this one at the Hiatt Hardware Blog.
