Re lipping and veneer repair

[Guest Barney]

Hi, apologies if this has been answered elsewhere. Just wondering if it is ok to re edge chipboard core nominal fire door with hardwood and repair a section of the face veneer with a hardwood block?

On another note i noticed a nominal fire door with intumescent brush strips in the edge of the door and flat intumescent strips routered into the frame. Is this acceptable.

Thanks in advance for replies

[Neil ashdown]

Any repairs to fire doors must be done in such a way as to improve and not detract from the likely fire resistance performance of the door. 

Clearly repairing a damaged door is likely to improve its fire performance but take care to use the correct materials.  Hardwood for lippings should be between 6mm and 18mm thick for FD30 and 8mm and 15mm for FD60.  It would be wise to avoid the use of Beech (certainly for FD60) and density of the timber should be 640 kg per cubic metre or more. Use urea formaldehyde based adhesives. 

Clearly, when repairing a nominal door there is no certification data sheet or fire resistance report to refer to, but by identifying the core material: Timber, Chipboard or Tubecore, you can find technical information in the public domain and therefore ensure the repairs meet the requirements of doors similar to the ones you are repairing.

Two things to remember though:  1) This work should be done by Competent Persons as referenced in Article 18 of the 2005 Fire Safety Order, 2) A Nominal fire door has no evidence of fire performance and therefore risk of failure to provide fire performance is greater that that of an evidenced or certificated fire door. Ensure such risks are dealt with in the Fire Risk Assessment for your building.  It would likely be prudent to replace the fire door instead of repair it in some locations where risk to harm is more likely! 

With regard to opposing fire seals, this can sometimes be an issue. How much of an issue is likely to depend on whether the door is latched or unlatched, whether it is single leaf or double leaf and whether it is single acting or double acting.

Finally, look at guidance documents available for upgrading timber based fire doors (TRADA is a good source), and for seals visit ifsa.org.uk , get a copy of Code of practice Hardware for Fire & Escape Doors and the BS 8214 : 2016  Timber-based Fire door assemblies - Code of practice. 

[Guest Baggins]

I have an internal fire door that the vaneer is coming away. Is it repairable, or can the vaneer be replaced?

[Neil ashdown]

Possibly repairable depending on extent of damage and of course, so long as the core of the door is not damaged.

[Guest Lee]

I have a similar problem the 1 hour frame had a steel pipe through the bottom clearly visible before removed with old door in place I'm tasked with the repair although believe the whole leg or frame should be replaced 

 

[Tom Sutton]

You may be able to use a glued hard wood dowel or as you said replace the whole leg