Fire Door Gaps

Over the last two years the space between a fire door and its frame known as the door gap has become a key focus of health care facility managers code consultants and engineers many of whom are finding out for the first time that the gaps on many fire doors at their facilities are larger than what is allowed by nfpa 80 fire doors and other opening protectives.

Fire door gaps.

Excessive fire door gaps are a significant problem to alleviate for hospitals and healthcare facilities with the recent updates in code compliance from the centers for medicare medicaid services cms. 1 fire door gap solutions frame head gap90 simpler smarter and safer ngp s ul certified 90 minute fire door gap solutions will help you avoid the cost labor and disruption of replacing existing structures to achieve compliance. The gap at the bottom of the door is usually around 10mm for non smoke conditions but 3mm when smoke seals are required. Nothing must be cut at the top at all and the certification label must remain intact.

Fire door seals are created to expand when they are in direct contact with heat and they close in the gaps that are in between the frame and the door leaf. How much can you cut off a fire door. According to the rules gaps are always calculated individually and depend on the geometric design parameters. This standard regulates the installation and maintenance of assemblies and devices used to protect openings in walls floors and ceilings against the spread of fire and smoke within into or out of buildings.

The smoke and the fire will try to push through the side and top gaps around a fire door while usually drawing air from underneath the door. Whether at the head jamb or door bottom excessive gaps put lives at risk. There is positive pressure in a room on fire until the fire is vented but at the base of the fire the pressure must be negative to draw in the air for the fire to receive oxygen. Underneath the fire door a gap of 8mm is traditionally acceptable although for fire doors that are required to limit spread of cold smoke only 3 mm is permissible with a threshold seal to be fitted if the gap is bigger.

A 1 1 see annex k for general information about fire doors. If according to their dimensions a door must have 5 mm gaps between a leaf and a frame considering a possible error they can be from 4 to 6 mm. In general the gap should not exceed 3mm along the 2 long edges and across top of the door leaf to facilitate checking of the gap on site a bwf fire door alliance scheme gap tester is available on request here. Weight height and width of a door.

In this case the reasonable error is 1mm. As a result smoke and fire are not able to permeate throughout the building.