Room Dividers/Fire Doors

[Brummieboy]

We are having building work done on our house and, as part of this, we are looking to open up the kitchen to a large room in the centre of the house. We need to use fire doors, as the staircase from the upstairs (where we have an old loft conversion without a fire door) is accessed via that room but want the opening to be over 2 metres.

I have a quote from a carpenter to make a set of sliding folding fire doors that would meet the regulations but wondered whether the folding sliding external patio doors sold by Wickes would suffice. Does anyone know if these external doors would satisfy the fire regulations?

 

[freddiemercurystwin]

I have a quote from a carpenter to make a set of sliding folding fire doors that would meet the regulations but wondered whether the folding sliding external patio doors sold by Wickes would suffice. Does anyone know if these external doors would satisfy the fire regulations?

Its very unlikely as most external doors are not fire doors, its also unlikely that a handmade glazed door will be accepted by building control.

To avoid being caught out when trying to get the work signed off by building control, make sure the doors you buy are designed to be fire doors. I don't think you can achieve fire resistance with sliding doors anyway. Also if it were glazed you would either have to use Georgian wired glass which is pretty unsightly or Pyrostop fire resistant glass which is £££s. A fire door should have a label like these: http://images.google.co.uk/imgres?i...tryUK%7CcountryGB&safe=off&sa=N&start=18&um=1 scroll down a bit. Make sure nobody removes the label. If you persue the sliding door route, without fail run it past building control before you commision the work.

edit to link that works!