Fire door compliance covered thanks to Shelforce and Fireshel

When it comes to fire doors, forget the aesthetics – it’s all about the compliance and technicalities of the product. Since launching its fully compliant Fireshel 30-minure fire, smoke and security resistant door in 2020, Birmingham window and door manufacturer Shelforce has been inundated. Here, the company’s Business Manager Howard Trotter (pictured) talks to Housing Association Magazine about why the testing behind the product is vital for Local Authorities, why they need to understand what they are specifying – and why the Fireshel is proving so popular.

Howard, why is the education around fire doors so important?
Fire doors are not ordinary doors; they are a carefully engineered fire safety device and are critical to the fire safety of a building and the people within it. The Grenfell tragedy, quite rightly, was a huge wakeup call and has put a greater sense of responsibility and caution when specifying and using materials on buildings and an increase in requests for third-party evidence to prove the suitability of them. As a result, the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) has worked with third-party certification bodies to develop minimum standards of assurance for fire doors.

Fire safety for Local Authorities is imperative, and when it comes to specifying a fire door solution for any project they must understand the standards that must be met. We understand what they need and have the answers to the questions they must ask when it comes to correctly manufacturing and installing fire doors and have made things as simple and easy to understand as possible.

What must Local Authorities look out for?
It is a legal requirement for fire door manufacturers to provide test evidence to show their product’s ability to resist fire, the Field of Application is the document that collates all the test evidence and makes the official statement that door sets within the size ranges listed are all compliant, without the Field of Application variations of tested composite door sizes are not allowed.

Any fire door installed must have a Field of Application from the manufacturer and if it does not then you will not be fitting the right door, making the consequences potentially catastrophic.

All fire doors must be third party audited for both fire and security compliance and have third party certification, which provides an additional level of assurance that the product is produced to the same specification and quality as that originally tested, and that the original test behaviour and criteria is both met and reliably maintained consistently.

They should reference and carefully check the manufacturer’s test evidence/certification and documentation for proposed fire door sets to ensure that it demonstrates compliance and meets the performance requirement in the Building Regulations guidance for fire resistance and smoke control from both sides.

How does the Fireshel comply?
The Fireshel composite fire door uses the FireFrame® dual fire, smoke and security compliant fire door set solution from Winkhaus which includes the FD30 / FD60 FireFrame® outerframe, and the Winkhaus AV2 auto-locking multi-point door lock with optional access control and is tested to resist security and fire including TS008 compliant letterplates, numerals, eye viewers, door knockers and security chains.

The door has achieved all the new stringent recommendations set by the MHCLG, has proven 30-minute fire resistance consistency having been fire tested from both sides many times to EN1634 -1, achieving 49 minutes fire resistance, and has also been PAS 024 Security tested for security compliance.

Fireshel doors are Q Mark 170 Scheme 3rd Party Accredited. The independent Q Mark audits at the Fireshel production facility ensure that the tested fire and smoke door specification is consistently and repeatedly manufactured with the exacting same specification as the security door specification.

How popular is the Fireshel proving?
We knew we had the perfect product for the market, but since we launched it sales have exceeded our expectations, which is testament to how good the product is. From a standing start we were manufacturing 70 fire doors a week and we’ve had to increase capacity to cope with the demand this year. With almost 35,000 fire doors to replace in Birmingham, demand is set to remain both high and constant for local authority projects both this year and into the future.

For more information on Shelforce, call 0121 603 5262 or visit www.shelforce.com.