fire regs for loft conversion

[Vass]

Some advice please A mate of mine is in the middle of a loft conversion to a house. The council have now insisted he replace all his Pine doors throughout the house with Firedoors Is that right? (London)

[John Rumm]

Not usually. How many storeys is the house?

With a conventional two storey house, the usual arrangement is to use fire doors on any new habitable rooms in the conversion, and then add self closers to any doors that open onto the main escape route from the loft.

He may have difficulties if the existing doors have glass panels though.

Note also that I have a feeling the rules in this are due to change shortly.

[Peter Parry]

Quite possibly, especially if the doors are flimsy modern ones. It is possible to get wood doors which meet the (mainly) smokestop requirements without going to full fire doors but many cheap ones don't.

The requirement for them to be self closing will be removed in the near future.

[Guy Dawson]

It was not the case in 2003 when we converted the loft in our house in Heston.

We were told that new doors like the one from the loft landing into the loft room had to be firedoors but existing doors on the ground and first floors did not have to be changed. If we did change any existing doors then they would have to be firedoors.

Guy

-- -------------------------------------------------------------------- Guy Dawson I.T. Manager Crossflight Ltd [e-mail]

[Simon Stroud]

Similar to what we did/were told a few years ago.

New doors in the loft must be 30 minute fire doors

Existing doors of "habitable rooms", (i.e. pretty much everything that isn't a bathroom or cupboard) opening onto the escape route (i.e. landing and entrance hall) are OK but must be fitted with self closers.

Existing glazing must be filled in or replaced with "georgian wired" glass.

Any doors replaced as part of the conversion would have to be upgraded to fire doors.

So what we did was:

- board/plaster over the little "windows" above the bedroom doors on the first floor

- replace the glazed kitchen door with a standard unglazed door. note we did this the night before the conversion chaps arrived - if they had done it 12 hours later then it would have had to be a fire door - madness! I left the painting of it until months later when the conversion was finished.

- and of course had self closers fitted on all these doors and the new ones in the loft.

Regards,

Simon.

[Andrew May]

JOOI what about doors replaced not as part of the conversion. Say, as part of refitting the kitchen some time later. Do they still have to be fire doors or could you invoke the grandfather principle and install something that is no worse than what was there previously?

Andrew

[Owain]

I would say they still have to be fire doors, as otherwise they *would* be worse than what was there previously (ie the fire door). Grandfather principle does not mean you can go back in history.

Owain

[Londoncityslicker]

I think the rules have changed recently.(April 07) It used to be fire doors in the conversion, a lobby area and low level escape windows were all that was needed.

I think that's all changed now and you need fire doors not only to the conversion but also to any rooms leading from the staircase in the loft. But you no longer need the low level windows to jump into the firemans hand from.

Can anyone confirm this is correct?

[Andrew May]

Possibly a poor example. I was thinking specifically about doors that had not been replaced as part of the conversion and therefore were not fire doors even after the conversion.

Andrew

[Hugo Nebula]

On Wed, 13 Jun 2007 20:18:03 +0100, a particular chimpanzee, John Rumm randomly hit the keyboard and produced:

Since April (2007), all doors onto the escape route have to be fire resisting (new or upgraded) to at least 20 minutes. They don't have to be fitted with self-closers, and there's no longer a requirement for an escape window in the roof.