30 Oct

Fire Door Safety Week 2022: Introducing Compliant Fire Doors You Can Automate Later!

Fire doors are all around us, most people use them every day! From high rise buildings to schools and care homes, they’re all around us and for good reason – to protect and save lives. While most people place a high priority on safety and security, it is unfortunate that even after tragic events such as the Grenfell Tower fire back in 2017, fire safety is still not always given the priority it deserves.

The British Woodworking Federation and BWF Fire Door Alliance found that people were 3x more likely to report a problem that wouldn’t impact their safety, such as Wi-Fi connectivity issues, over fire door damages. It’s statistics like this that prompted them to launch Fire Door Safety Week.

You might be wondering what this has to do with us here at Steeper – the answer is everything! You might already know, we’re a leading supplier, distributor, and manufacture of prosthetic and orthotic devices, but we’re also an industry leader in Accessible Technology used to empower our patients to take control of their environment and their independence.

So, this Fire Door Safety week, we’re helping by bringing awareness to automated fire doors that help improve accessibility to those less able as well as the safety of all building users.

Why is there a need for automated fire doors?

The Equality Act 2010 says organisations have a duty to make reasonable adjustments to ensure disabled people have access to things like education, housing, and employment, and automated fire doors fall under this for good reason. Imagine trying to pry open a heavy fire door while managing your wheelchair or having to call for help every time you want to enter or exit a building.

Director of Business Development at Steeper, Jonathan Murfin says, “Fire doors are vital for fire safety, but are often heavy and difficult to operate for people less able. Residents of care homes and other residential settings can have a wide range of conditions and abilities making the opening and closing of these doors difficult. Fire doors are a legal requirement in these settings (except in private homes) and our accessible and automated options help keep residents safe and secure, without compromising mobility or daily living by enhancing enablement. This supports inclusion and equality and it’s something we’re passionate about bringing awareness to!”

However, automating an existing fire door isn’t as easy as it sounds. In fact, for fire doors to remain compliant you must not interfere with the integrity of the door. For example, attaching an external motor to an existing fire door will void any fire burn certification that door may have complied with before being installed. Put simply, in most situations the entire door set would need to be replaced, and this can be costly especially if the needs of residents were to change and further systems are required.

That’s where we come in…

The UK’s first compliant fire door you CAN automate

Not only is replacing entire door sets costly, but it’s also wasteful. That’s why we’ve partnered with esteemed joiners, Batty Joinery, to create a solution that is adaptable, burn tested and certified to UK fire service standards, and exceeds many current regulatory standards. This offers greater reassurance for all users while futureproofing against large replacement costs if/when new regulations are introduced, as is predicted as one of many likely outcomes, in the form of recommendations or legal mandates from the ongoing Grenfell enquiry.

“Our collaboration with Batty Joinery means we can continue to supply our clients with very attractive, high-quality, automatic fire doors accessible for people of all abilities. We’re experts in accessible technology, and they’re the experts in joinery, together we’ve created a unique modular design that allows you to fit a standard fire door into your building now and add automation later if/when you need it.” Says Jonathan.

“What differentiates our systems from others, is that our automation solutions do not compromise fire and safety standards, in fact they enhance them! Our unique modular design retains full integrity of the fire door following the addition of our automated solutions while other systems do not. Our modular systems are currently the only ones that have been fully burn tested by the UK fire service and achieved certification levels 1 & 2 exceeding current industry standards.”

“We’ve found it’s our customers who are demanding this increase in safety standards. They’re not only wanting to support the highest levels of safety for residents, but they also want to future-proof installations as new legislation is expected to mandate automated fire doors to have passed fire service burn testing certification levels 1 or 2.”