Hello, 

The fire door survey for our building has been done and tells us that all our riser cupboards and communal doors now have to be smoke doors now with smoke seals added and the gaps at the bottom reduced to 3mm.  It is a 20 year old block and the doors have flat fire strips in them and gaps at the bottom of around 6-8mm.  Why now, after all this time do they suddenly have to be smoke doors?  They said Approved Document B of the Building Regs states all fire doors in residential blocks should be smoke doors, but I thought this document was for new builds or big changes to buildings - not repairing existing fire doors.  Any thoughts would be appreciated!

 

Regards,

Jan

Yes ADB only applies to new builds and material alterations, however the RRO and following a small fire in London, the Fire Safety Act 2021 enforce general fire safety of existing buildings.

The regulations have not distally changed with respect to smoke control for communal doors or riser doors, in the past 25 years. Given the age of the building, I would have thought that a gap of 6-8mm the doors were never to standard.

You will find better guidance on doors in here - https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/making-your-small-block-of-flats-safe-from-fire/a-guide-to-making-your-small-block-of-flats-safe-from-fire-accessible

It's not up to the fire door inspector to specify what must be done but report on the status of the doors so the fire risk assessor can determine if they are to the required standard - which in some small blocks could be doors with no seals at all.

However, it's quite clear that these doors did not meet the standard (FD30S smoke sealed, they sound like they meet the basic FD30 standard as larger threshold gaps are allowed) they should have done at the time so some remedial measures are likely to be required by the FRA (but not necessarily)- but not new doors and frames, just changing the intumescent strips to combined intumescent & smoke seals and reducing the threshold gap by bottom lipping or threshold seals.