Fire-rated doors will increase the safety of your facility in a pretty big way, and they’re fairly easy to install. However, what most people don’t realize is there are several things that can easily cause your door to lose its fire-rating.

Instead of having you search all over the internet and Google phrases such as, “what causes my door to lose its fire-rating,” I thought I would be kind enough to give you a list.

I’m nice like that.

Plus, I can give you an extra bit of info on the reasoning behind why this happens,, as well as how you can avoid it.

Fire-Rated Doors: Passing Inspection

Self-Latching

A fire-rated door is required to be self-latching, but due to normal wear-and-tear over time, it can lose its effectiveness. The latch can wear down and cause the bolt to slide in and out easier than intended. If this happens and your fire marshal notices, you might not pass inspection.  

It’s a simple fix, though. The latching device needs to be replaced with a fire-rated latch. It’s also important to note that existing mounting holes have to be used. If you don’t use the existing ones, you have to fill the vacant holes.

Self-Closing

This door has to do a lot of things by itself to pass inspection.

A fire-rated door has to close on its own without any help from outside material or sources. It’s also important to keep the area clear of any objections or material that would obstruct the door. Plus, you should never prop the door open with anything other than the attached hardware. If you haveall of these things covered, I’d say you’re in pretty good shape.

No Gaps

The fire-rated door was created to keep smoke and fire from spreading through a facility, but all of that is useless if there are any gaps around the door. This will easily allow smoke through and defeats the purpose to the entire fire-rating. Any and all holes and gaps need to be filled with fire-rated material.

Labels and Hardware

You would think installing a fire-rated door would have you covered,, right?

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but you also need to make sure the hardware that comes with the door is labeled as such. Every single piece of a fire-rated door has to be labeled as such. No parts can be missing or broken and no field modifications can be made that would void the door’s fire-rating.

Paint

When it comes to voiding the validity, paint is rarely at the top of people’s minds. However, it’s a simple way to screw up your door’s fire-rating without even realizing you’re doing it.

If any of the door’slabels get painted over in any way, that voids the door’s fire-rating. All doors need to be clearly labeled and that can’t happen if they are covered in a fresh coat of paint. So many people fail inspection because of this one simple thing, and it’s easy to avoid.

Do you have fire-rated doors? Do you have more questions on what it takes to pass an inspection? We’d love to help you out. Contact us anytime!