Fire door overview

The Hackspace
#1

So seems the space has some bits to do on the fire doors in the space.
I’m listing it here so that it doesn’t get lost in the group chat, and so we can plan what we do.

  • Woody Dusty door
    • has loads of crap piled in front of it
    • Needs a push pad or push bar installed
    • Needs a light above it
  • Bar door
    • Has been fixed by Northern since The Great Fire of 2020
  • Black door (in former Green Room which leads to the main staircase)
    • Needs unlocking (who has the key?)
    • Needs push pad or push bar installed
  • Snackspace doors
    • Work to open but locking them again is fiddly as the down bar is bent and prevents the door from locking unless it fully lowers into the ground
  • Main doors
    • There are questions if this is compliant fully or not, as the red exit button might? Be too small.

Actions:

  • Push pads needed for the black door and woody door.
  • Take the down bar on snackspace door and bend it into shape again so it locks by pulling it closed.

Who wants to take on a piece of this? I’ll be happy to assist in a few weeks when I have time.

#2

I have everything needed for the Woody door so ideally I just need someone to help at some point as it’s heavy.

The black door I’ve not had chance to look at as I don’t know who has the key nowadays.

The two doors onto the street need the space to decide how we want to go about adding access control. I believe to be compliant you need to be able to pass though the door in X amount of seconds and the small red button might not be enough/obvious to all members to do this.

#3

Just a note the door in woody has a light mounted and wired ready to be used when the right fittings are installed. I just haven’t put the light into service .

#4

For the main door it’s not just the red switch that can be used to open the door from the inside.

There’s also the big metal disabled switch underneath as well.

Maybe folks don’t realise this?

#5

I think people have seen the big accessible exit button and probably use it more than the red button. The problem is that it’s not physically linked to the lock and any number of things could stop it from working from cut or melted cables, to power supply failure, to software failure, to water damage such that it doesn’t actually count as an emergency exit release.

I’m not aware of legislation, but my intuition is that people should be able to run at a door and easily get out even if a python script isn’t running :slightly_smiling_face:

The lock is inherently fail secure so if the power is cut like in The Great Fire of 2020 the space doesn’t pop open once the backup battery has run out. The only way to physically release the lock is the red button.

And that doesn’t seem like enough to count as an emergency exit?

#6

There are two ways for fire doors to unlock during a fire. Either mechanically via push/breaker bars, or have the magnetic locks disable when the fire alarm is tripped

Modern office building typically have the latter, but as Conor has pointed out the space is fail secure, so a mechanical option must be present for us. Also not sure how we’d link the door to the fire alarm system anyway…

A quick guide that we’d ideally follow is this: Badly Fitted Fire Doors Don’t Save Lives
They recommend push bars for places that have members of the public who aren’t fully aware of their surroundings, which likely suits us the best as not all members are fully aware of the space’s layout.

Following that list basically outlines that all our doors fail in some regard including the internal ones.

1 Like
#7

If people do want to carry out fixes/repairs to any of the fire doors please contact the board first with what you plan to do. We want to avoid a repeat of doors having holes added / being damaged.

#8

The key for the black door has been found by the ex-member, and I’ll go and collect it at some point over the coming weeks when we are both free.

Assuming the @Team_Board are okay with me then fitting and expensing this?

#9

Seems ok to me, just make sure it’s the right handing.
It’s got my ok, just need the others to confirm :relaxed: