15. Bedroom Doors

 

15.1 All bedroom entrance doors, will be fire resisting and fitted with a self-closing device and intumescent strips and cold smoke seals.

 

15.2 A fire door is a door provided for the passage of persons, which together with its frame and furniture as installed in a building, is intended to resist the passage of fire and/or gaseous products of combustion for a prescribed time period. To this end, fire doors should be fitted with a self-closing device (or kept locked shut in the case of stores, cupboards etc.), and be fitted with intumescent strips (in all cases) and cold smoke seals (where the door opens into an escape route). Fire doors should be suitably indicated with the appropriate signs except in the case of bedroom doors where signs may be omitted.

 

15.3 Following a suitable risk assessment, bedroom doors fitted with self closing devices may be fitted with an approved propriety device to either hold open the door or to allow ease of opening. Advice should be sought from the fire officer and approval sought where necessary.

 

15.4 Each door fitted with an automatic door release should be closed at a pre-determined time each night and remain closed throughout the sleeping hours. Or, if for reasons of management this is impracticable, it should be the specific responsibility of a competent member of staff to operate the release mechanisms at least once each week to ensure:-

15.5 Where a home has been built to an alternative engineered solution, or it has been agreed by all parties concerned that self closing devices may be omitted in certain circumstances, this fact will be recorded in the fire log book and fire risk assessment and the above sections will not apply as appropriate.