Fire door frames and fire doors for bedrooms

[JongoT]

I need to fit fire doors in our three floor house. We will be letting to two sharers, a couple or a family so it won´t be an HMO.
I want to check three things:

The builder says that fire doors can be fitted to the existing frames and still be compliant: Is this true?

Do I have to have fire doors for bedrooms? The top floor has two bedrooms that have doors on to the landing and stairwell. The front bedroom has a window that is wide enough and sufficiently near the ground to provide an escape route because that side of the house is only two storeys. .

Do I have to have smoke alarms in the bedrooms? The electrician says you don´t need them, just one on each landing, the theory being that if the bedroom doors are the usual normal doors any smoke would find its way on to the landing and set off the smoke alarm.

Thanks!!

 

[Deleted member 174758]

The builder says that fire doors can be fitted to the existing frames and still be compliant: Is this true?

Not really, no. The rating is based on the door and frame as a system and by rights the door casing or lining should be a fire rated one.It is highly unlikely that the door casings or linings have been installed in a way which meets fire regs. But one question - are your existing doors 44mm thick? You can get thinner fire doors, but they are not as readily avallable as standard FD30 doors, which are normally 44mm thick

At a minimum the architraves at one side of the wall need to be removed and any gaps between the casing/lining and the studwork (or masonry if the wall is brick or block, etc) filled with an appropriate fire proof material - mineral wool for gaps bigger than 10mm, intumescent caulk for narrower gaps (do NOT allow your builder to use pink AFFF fire foam unless your insurers have OK'd this - many won't). Once that is done the architraves can be replaced

Whilst it is true that the door can be routed to take intumescent strips (this is done on listed building refurb work), but you need to ensure that the hinges are changed to fire door hinges (on intumescent hinge pads) and that if the doors are certified as fire doors that they are fitted with fire door closers. Lock bodies, etc are supposed to be wrapped in intumescent paper (e.g. Intergraf). The gapping around the door needs to be maintained at 2 to 4mm all round, and be no more than 4mm at any point at the bottom when the door is closed. If the gap at the bottom is too great, a self-closing drop seal should be fitted to the bottom edge if the door. Carpet should not continue through the opening, for obvious reasons (there needs to be some form of threshold)

I can't say for sure on the other issues, and I am assuming that these doors really do need to be fire rated, however I do fit fire doors regularly and AFAIK I am still working on the current regs for the doors themselves