Fire Doors and Fire Testing
All commercial spaces should invest in fire safety devices/equipment to protect property from fire damage and people from fire burns and loss of life. These fire safety devices aim to give early warning when signs of a fire are detected, prevent smoke or fire from spreading and extinguish fires. One of these safety devices is a fire door. Here is what you need to know about fire doors and fire testing:
What Are Fire Doors?
These are specially made doors; they can keep smoke and fire from spreading to the next room. They can also withstand pressure resulting from the expansion of air caused by heat from a fire.
What Is Fire Testing?
Simply put, fire testing is the process of testing fire doors. It is aimed at making sure that a particular door deemed as a fire door is fireproof. If you come across the phrase fire protection testing, it also means the same as fire testing.
The door is placed in a furnace where it is subjected to conditions that mimic what is experienced during a fire. The following three key things are tested:
- Whether the fire door allows smoke to pass through
- How long the fire door withstands heat from the fire before it starts to get damaged. This is the resistant rating level. When you are in the market for a fire door, you will mostly be looking for a particular resistance rating level, represented by a time in minutes or hours. This is how long the door can withstand heat from a fire.
- Whether other fire safety devices linked to the fire door will work as they should. For example, some fire doors are connected to fire or smoke detectors. Once a fire is detected, the fire door is supposed to shut itself automatically.
Fire Doors Can Look Like Ordinary Doors
Don't reconsider installing a fire door because you think it might alter the aesthetics of your commercial space. Fire doors can be manufactured to meet any design and colour you want; the most important thing is that they pass fire testing.
Who Carries Out Fire Testing?
For the government to guarantee that no counterfeit fire doors enter the market, it requires that fire testing should be done by accredited and certified institutions and testing authorities.
To be registered, these companies must portray competence in understanding and following fire testing rules and regulations outlined by the National Association of Testing Authorities.