Fire Doors

[nickb12345]

But the power dosent go off with the fire alarm! (well not unless something bad goes wrong :S)

 

Nick

[Tomo]

I do hope you are only treating these posts as suggestions to take to the fire officer/council/insurance people.

 

Nobody can define what is suitable for a given venue without seeing the place, and exact requirements change between councils and insurance companies (especially insurance!)

 

That said, my money would be on an electronic latch that fails open in the event of a fire alarm.

Key operated would be cheapest, although requires that keys are kept available for personnel who need non-emergency access.

[bruce]

We seem to be overcomplicating things. To me, the obvious solution is either a break-glass or push-bar door, with key override from the "outside". So it's normally locked, can be left unlocked if required, can be opened from both sides by authorised people and can be used as a fire exit if required.

 

Bruce.

[strandgsx]

In a recent installation I designed there was a simmilar problem to that at the begining of this thread.

 

The best outcome was decided by the fire alarm engineer, it ended up with a coded door which was connected to the fire alarm via an xp95 relay, so when the alarm sounded the lock was diaabled and the door was free to open, the only bugger with fire relay systems is that fire doors tend to have auto close installed where they close on their own, doesnt help when you are installing iwbs and you set of the fire alarm (lazer beam detector) and run franticly to the foh desk to switch the system off with doors slamming in your face!!.

[danburns]

Our doors at work are linked to the fire alarm - 2 internal fire doors which shut, and disable the open button, and the front fire exit which springs open...even if you have closed and locked it...when I test the fire alarms weekly, the front door goes skitz - even if I let it open during the alarm then lock it it'll still go mad. They're activated by relays.

 

At the theatre, we have two electromag door catches - alarm sounds, relay closes, doors shut. Unless you are doing a drill and just use the sound alarm key on the panel in which case the entire place remains open - which is a pain (I dont have the test key for call points there, but have the keycode). I saw an extention of this in Germany, where either side of the stage was a set of huge loading doors, and a smaller set of access doors. From the DSM console, they could hit a button and all of the doors would silently close. spooky if you aren't expecting it

[esp-protocol]

Problem with having any kind of electronically latched door on a fire escape route is that

 

a: it must release when the fire alarm sounds

 

b: it must not re-latch if someone presses the "alarm silence" - this helps to prevent people becoming inadvertently trapped as mentioned earlier by someone else

 

c: the requirement of 'b' means that dodgy electricians should not be allowed to install relays on sounder circuits

 

d: a means of opening the door must be provided if the fire alarm interface fails - normally a double pole green breakglass installed on the accommodation side of the door directly interrupting the supply to the latching mechanism - solenoid or magnet

 

LFEPA Guidance note 64 explains all.....