Are Your Door Hardware Products Fire Rated?

Fire safety has always been an important consideration in specification, which means that one question we are asked almost every day is ‘are your door hardware products fire rated?’ In this article, we’ll give an overview of our fire rated product ranges, and what you should be looking out for.

Particularly since the Grenfell Tower Tragedy of 2017, and the policies that have followed, fire safety has become a number one priority for architects and designers. This has placed much needed pressure on manufacturers like us, to ensure that our products are safe, by fire testing or assessing each relevant products and its variations.

Testing vs. Assessing

Before we break down the results for our products, let’s look at the difference between fire testing and assessing.

A fire test is when the product is set up as it would be in real life in a testing facility and burnt for a period of time. The results are split by integrity and insulation.

• Integrity – the system’s ability to stop the flames or gas from passing through a door and spreading to the other side.

• Insulation – the system’s ability to limit the surface temperature rise on the non-fire side of the door to an average of 140°C, or 180°C as a hot spot maximum.

A fire assessment is when a test for one specific product is taken, and a fire assessor then analyses the results and looks at how that would play out across all the types and variations of that one product.

Application to door hardware

Every component that is recessed into a fire rated door should be fire tested or assessed. Let’s look at how this applies to Joseph Giles products:

Sprung Bearing Rose – our sprung and bearing rose mechanisms are recessed into the door, and have been fire assessed. We have also carried out our own fire test assessment on our lever handles and door knobs, which means they should be acceptable for fire-rated doors.

Recessed Pull Handle – our recessed pull handle SF1049.01 (175mm x 58mm x 18mm) has been tested in accordance with BS476 Part 20/22 1987. Its time to failure was 51 minutes for integrity and insulation, and therefore should be acceptable for 30-minute fire doors.

The majority of our hinges and pivots, lock, latches, bolts and catches, and door closers & controls have been fire test and assessed.

If you'd like any further information, or advice on project specification, please get in touch with us at hello@josephgiles.com or call +44 (0) 20 8680 2602.