Hi David.
Thanks for that. Sliders would work well for access and as draught
lobbies to main entrances, but as you say, in the U.k these may not be
used in corridors which provide a safe means of escape for fire. British
Standards requires that all automatic sliding doors on fire escape
routes must default to open and stay open to allow escape when the fire
alarm goes off. Which means they can not be used in corridors, to hold
back smoke/fire.
An option does exist for installing power assist onto conventional
hinged fire doors which can be manually over-ridden in the event of a
fire evacuation and which must be fail-safe. But these components are
expensive, compared to ordinary door closers. A small to medium sized
public building with say 6 floors could easily have over 40 sets of
circulation/lobby doors which could cost in the region of £3,500 per
door-set to put onto power operators that are designed to be suitable
for disabled people.
Cheers,
Glynn
-----Original Message-----
From: Accessibuilt list [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf
Of david crofy
Sent: 26 June 2003 16:37
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: door closers
Hi Glynn
I can agree with what you are saying about stack pressures and
positive/negative pressures which affect doors indirectly throughout a
building. It is not only tall buildings which are affected, smaller
buildings accross the road may also be affected.
One solution we used in industrial office blocks where we had pressure
problems was to introduce sliding doors at intervals throughout the
building
in place of swing doors, we located these doors at Tee junctions to give
the
doors space to slide.
This was overseas and I am not sure how the British Standards would
apply as
I do not have a copy at present. However, it is a potential solution to
the
closer problem.
Dave Croft
access.forall@ntlworld,com
----------End of Message----------
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