Internal Fire Doors

[Brooky]

Can anyone help...
I'm having a loft conversion in my victorian terrace. What is the deal with fire doors? All the existing doors are four panel pine jobs. I gather we can't use the same for any new doors created. Is it JUST the new door at the top of the new stairs into the converted loft room that needs the new fire door or are there other 'strategically' important fire doors within the house that need to be fire doors?
And... are there fire doors that resemble the four panel pine doors we already have? as opposed to those fake looking prefabricated ones.

[NealHarman]

Brooky wrote:

Can anyone help... I'm having a loft conversion in my victorian terrace. What is the deal with fire doors? All the existing doors are four panel pine jobs. I gather we can't use the same for any new doors created. Is it JUST the new door at the top of the new stairs into the converted loft room that needs the new fire door or are there other 'strategically' important fire doors within the house that need to be fire doors? And... are there fire doors that resemble the four panel pine doors we already have? as opposed to those fake looking prefabricated ones.

OK, since nobody else has replied... I'm not a big expert on this but have/am done/doing something similar.

As I understand it, there are two choices. Either replace all existing doors (with some exceptions I think - bathrooms?) with FD20 firedoors (in practice, this seems to mean FD30), or provide a means of escape from the attic, when only new doors need to be firedoors - which strictly seems to imply that if you do any other refurb at the same time, you get to put firedoors there too. 'Means of escape' is usually a window that meets certain criteria - accessibility to fire service, size of useable opening, height from ground. You will need closers on existing doors though.

In practice BC officers seem to have some discretion: ours is only requiring one firedoor (to the attic room), with normal doors (with closers) even though (a) they will all be new, and (b) our 'means of escape' window does not strictly meet the criteria. (We have chosen to fit firedoors to the other bedrooms in anycase.) Talk to them - they're generally pretty helpful.

Neal

BTW Yes you can get firedoors in a very wide variety of styles.

[chappers]

that is basically how it works all depends on how finicky your BCO wants to be basically your new door to the loft will need to be FD30 and strictly speaking any door you replace should be too, however some will allow you to replace existing doors with non-FD30 doors, however all doors which connect your fire safe passage to aa habitable room need to be fitted with closers regardless of whether they are FD30 or not