If you have looked at a fire door specification, you will have seen codes like FD30, FD60 and FD30S. They are not arbitrary. Each one tells you how long the door assembly is designed to resist fire, and whether it also controls smoke. Understanding them helps you check that the right door is in the right place, which is one of the things an inspection confirms.
FD stands for fire door. The number is the rating in minutes of fire resistance the door assembly achieved under test conditions.
The rating applies to the whole assembly as tested, leaf, frame, seals and hardware together, not to the leaf in isolation. This is why fitting non-matching components or modifying a door can invalidate its rating.
An S after the number, as in FD30S, means the door also has a cold smoke seal and is tested to limit the spread of smoke at ambient temperatures, not just the spread of fire. Smoke is what incapacitates and kills people in most fires, often well before flame reaches them, so smoke control is frequently as important as fire resistance.
A plain FD30 controls fire for 30 minutes. An FD30S controls fire for 30 minutes and restricts cold smoke from the outset.
The right rating depends on the building, its layout and its fire strategy, which is determined by a competent fire engineer or risk assessor rather than chosen by default. As a general picture:
Crucially, you cannot tell the required rating simply by looking. It comes from the building's fire strategy and risk assessment. An inspection checks that the door present matches what the building requires.
A door's rating is only meaningful if the assembly is maintained as certified. Two things in particular tie back to the rating:
This is the heart of inspection: confirming that the door on site still matches the certified assembly its rating is based on, against a standard such as BS 8214.
Certified fire doors usually carry a label or plug, often on the top or hinge edge of the leaf, identifying the manufacturer and the rating. During registration and inspection, that information is recorded so the door's identity and certification travel with it through its whole life, supporting the golden thread of building safety information.
DoorTRACE records the fire rating, certification reference and key details of every door at registration, so the right specification is captured once and checked against at every inspection. If a door's condition drifts from its rating, it is flagged as a defect and tracked to resolution. See the platform or book a demo.
The amendments to Approved Document B come into force today: more than one common stair in new blocks of flats with a storey 18m or more, evacuation shafts to support evacuation lifts, and new escape guidance. What changes, who it touches, and the fire door angle.
Only inspections are charged on Pay-As-You-Go from now on. The form that closes out remedial work joins registrations and reports on the free list, so the cost of a door for the year is known before it starts.
An open warehouse floor resists traditional compartmentation, so its fire doors concentrate around the edges and take the hardest knocks in any sector. Where the doors are, the fork-lift problem, and a check regime for a hard-wearing site.