I would value your opinion on hooks that hold open fire doors. There are two sets of doors at either end of an entrance corridor in our church. This corridor is a busy thoroughfare and also used as a "disabled" entrance. To facilitate use of the doors hooks have been affixed which enable the doors to be held open. I would welcome your thoughts on the pros & cons of this. Looking forward to hearing from you.

Hi Garth

Fire doors are only helpful if they can stop the spread of fire. Being held open with hooks will stop them doing that. To be able to hold a fire door open legally, you need to install a fire door retainer. A simple retrofit retainer that allows the door closer to close the fire door in case of a fire is for example the Dorgard.

Harry

Hi Garth, just to give you the possible outcome of not managing fire doors, an enforcing fire safety officer could prosecute if a designated fire door is held open by anything other than a fire alarm activated device. Dorgard is a solution, however, if the fire door is on a "critical escape route" (the only way out of a building) then it may only be held open with a hard wired alarm activated device following a risk assessment.

The fire risk assessment is the cornerstone of all things fire safety within your premise & should have considered any high volume doors that may be habitually held open illegally, if you have not done so I would recommend that you have your assessment conducted professionally, it costs less than you think & will give you a good grounding should you wish to conduct your own assessments in the future.