Fire Exits

Hi All In a residential care home with electro magnetic locks can you advise on the following. The home has areas with people who have mental health issues. As such these wings are secure and staff and visitors enter via key pads - entering the numbers. The locks fail to the open on power failure and on operation of the fire alarm system. To escape staff can aid residents out. I have noticed some homes also have green break glass overrides adjacent to the door as well. Are these additional overrides really necessary? Thanks

Hi We are having a new main entrance / exit door fitted to our apartment block. We have 12 flats over 3 floors, these doors are the only entrance / fire exit from the communal areas. All flats have French doors on to small balconies (not sure if that’s relevant) Existing doors open outwards but are awkward to use therefore they are being changed to open inwards. There is also a secondary set of inner timber / full glass panel doors creating an internal porch that doesn’t appear to be of any real purpose. It is proposed they be removed. Will this comply with current regs ? Can Fire exit doors open inwards ? Thanks in advance. Da…

Our village hall has a double door that is a fire escape, one door latches to the door frame and the other latches the the first. Occasionally someone leaves the first door unlatched to the frame then just lets the second door close to this. The result is that both doors are free to open and this leaves the hall open all night. Is it allowable to put a closer on the first door so that it will latch to the door frame on it's own? The second door will not need a closer. I hope this makes sense, Best regards Alan

hi just a quick question I work in [supermarket name removed by moderator] and would like to ask about fire exits there is a fire exit at the end of a 20foot long corridor double doored with a fire alarm next to it, the corridor is hatched completely and all the appropriate signs are up but I was told that we are allowed to store bread stacks in plastic trays along the whole length of the corridor as long as it dosnt stick out by more that a metre ,so there is a combustible material in an enclosed 20foot corridor sticking out by 1 metre in a 3-4 metre width corridor and it also obscures the fire alarm at the end of the corridor. many thanks

Hello all Just after some clarification. I recently completed a fire risk assessment to a residential property for disabled persons, the property was three floors with an open staircase with a dead end situation resulting in single direction of travel, L2 fire alarm in place with fire doors to all bedrooms. The travel distance to reach the final exit was measured at 23m from the top bedroom. I made a requirement for a sprinkler system to be installed to protect the escape route, bedrooms etc. Due to rural location the fire service have a response time of around 20 - 30 minutes. Whilst I was happy with my assessment, I had a visit by the fire safety inspector fro…

Can you please advise me if fire door seals should be fitted to a final exit fire door, as logic tells me no, because if the seals swell in heat the door would not open and trap people in a fire. Also could you please advise me if there is a minimum width of an final escape door. Regards John free ringtones download, samsung ringtones, mp3 ringtones downloads

Some fire doors where I work have no push bars on them and have bars and bolts on them in working hours . Someone as complained about them being used as an entry and exit so bars and bolts are on all the time is this illegal and if so is there a legislation I can mention?

We have recently carried out a refurbishment of a shop unit and put a break glass on the door frame exiting the building. The architect has asked for it to be removed and put somewhere else because it doesn't look nice, can this be done? The only other place is 2m away from the door which would take you away from the escape exit.

Do final exit doors leading outside the building need to be made of wood / FD rated or is steel acceptable?

Hello, I am after some advice about an idea I had to make use of our external fire escape. We are a 9 story mixed commercial and residential community building. We have an internal and external escape route serving all floors. The external escape route is the residential primary escape while the internal is the commercial primary means of escape but it's possible for anyone to go by any route if they need to. As I say, we're a community building so we have people living and working in the same space. We are landlocked so we don't have any outside space, apart from the roof. I had the idea of using the fire escape for a community garden. Is this allowed? We…

Hello.Our landlord does not allow us to keep our shoes near door(in a small corridor) because fire entrance must be clear she told.Is it true?How many pair of shoes i can keep near my door? With regard Vanda

Hi My landlady says I can't leave the chassi of my buggy in the communal entrance hall. I take the buggy apart and put the seat inside the flat but I would like to leave the chassi downstairs folded as I don't have space for it inside and it's quite heavy. Please advice I'm happy to send photos.

Could you please recommend some sort of quick release, but secure, locking device? Our business site currently has security fencing with metal gates that are closed with a sliding bar and secured with a padlock. Padlock keys are kept in nearby, external, key boxes for use in an emergency. The use of such keys has been deemed as 'not ideal' in the event of an incident.

How many fire exit doors are required from a kitchen in a portacabin?

We live in a shop with flat above, at the back of our property we have two fire exits, one for the shop and one for our flat. Directly opposite us with only a narrow lane between us is a busy car wash. The car wash needs to utilise the space outside our home and also other businesses. There is a yellow line in front of of all exits. They can not function without using this facility and the parking enforcement are allowing them to park. Sometimes our exits have cars in front of them most of the day. I have contacted the local fire safety officer and she says it is a parking problem. Please could you give me advice on this issue, how can we keep our exits clear.? We are mak…

Good Morning, I am happy i all my Fire Exits are correctly located, the right type of door and all have the right amount of space available for the safe egress of all employees. My Problem is, exactly what signs/notices should i have on both sides of the door? On most of them i have the dual sign 'Fire Exit, Keep Clear'. Do i need this on both sides of the door/exit?

Hi, We have an internal fire door that forms part of the exit route. However when the building is unoccupied we need to lock the door from the outside for security reasons. Can we use a push pad one side and lock the door after we exit the room?

Hello Just wanted to know I work in a small store with the front door is the only door and its the fire escape, but between the store front and were us technicians are there are two doors one that is locked with a pass key for employees. We also have no window escapes there is a glass hammer but the windows are about 30CM tall ant close to the ceiling covers in metal bars which cannot be removed. the premises is rented and we do have extinguishers many thanks

Hi, I am enquiring about fire exit doors. Does the perimeter of the building have to be a certain size before it would need a fire exit door fitted? Regards, Katherine

A situation exists in my home, where my wife leaves the house to go to work at 3.a.m. She locks the door from the outside. The door must be opened from the inside with a key. This to me feels like she is subjecting myself, and my two, 6 and 7 year old children to an increased risk in the event of a fire. This because I have not been able to form the habit of putting the key in close proximity to the door on the inside. Of course in an ideal world I would be making sure that the door was easy to open, in spite of her actions, but her actions are deliberate, whereas my failures to act are not by choice. Of course she believes that she is doing this due to other reasona…

In a simple layout shop would the customer WC doors opening onto the customer area and the staff area doors require quick release thumbturn mechanisms on the inside of the door or would key lockable devices be acceptable if the key remains in the door?

Hi there, I currently have a training centre that has a fire door which leads to a ground floor stairwell with a further fire door to its left which leads to outside. At the moment the fire door leading from the training room to the stairwell has a push bar to exit but on the other side it has a handle so basically people using the stairs on a day to day basis could access this training centre which we do not want. Is there an issue if we remove the door handle to stop personnel accessing this area from the stairwell?

We are currently constructing an extension onto the rear of a council property with the tenant still in residence and left him with access to the rear via a small walkway to the rear door as a fire escape. But due now the works are getting further on we now need to remove that access to the rear door because we need to carry out works in that part of the kitchen. But the tenant is being obstructive and keeps stating that the law states that he needs access to the rear in case there is a fire at the front door but due to the type of work being carried out ie excavations we has a company have a duty of care to protect the tenant from injuring himself on the construction si…

Hi, There is a building that has been recently renovated to have a groundfloor flat, an first floor flat and the loft has been converted into a further flat on the second floor. On the second floor flat there is only access to it by a single stair case and no other exits. All three flats in the building are student flats with 5 bedrooms in each. I fear if there was a fire that blocked the only exit stair you would be trapped as there is no other exit out of windows as they are all unaccesible and too high to escape. When this flat was recently renovated do you believe it complies with building reg's? I believe for it to be safe an alternative exit would be required…

Hi, I work for a maintenance company and we have been asked to install push bars onto a set of doors which our client wishes to use as a fire escape. The doors currently open inwards. One site has doors which lead straight onto public footpath running at the back of the site. The second site has a set of doors used to escape onto a back alley/walkway at the back of the site, this leads to a gate/door which leads onto a public footpath - this is the location where they wish to have push bars installed. I have suggested to install a push pad and D handle with appropriate signage and lighting in addition, but I'd like to know if this is the correct advise or i…