Our director against alll advice wants to fit existing doors - including fire doors with digi-locks, we are saying that this would invalidate the fire doors, does anyone know of an accreditted door manufacturer that would do this. Please say you dont

Thanks

SBH

Just for clarity operating this digital lock would then allow access to use the push bar OR is the digital lock being used to open the door from the other side and push-bar use remains unimpeded?

I have seen them in a bank, but the keypad is the opposite side to the direction of travel ie used to get into office / behind the counter, but push pad to get out.

Chris

Do you mean:

A) mechanical digital locks where a hole is required to be drilled through the door to fix it? or

B) electrically locked doors with a digital key pad or swipe pad?

Both are fine on means of escape as long as the keypad is on the 'safe side' of the door and the side you appraoch when escaping has an override of some description (to be decided by a RA)

But drilling a blooming great hole in a fire door might be more problematic, especially if its protecting a staircase or other critical escape route (eg a singel escape route or in sleeping accomadation). For this task, you will need a competent fire door carpenter 

Originally Posted by: John Murray

Originally Posted by: Kate

I have never heard of anyone even thinking about doing such a thing to fire doors

I worked at one place where the fire doors were routinely chained and padlocked at night.....with a night-shift working.....because the guy doing the locking only worked days.....I'm quite sure there are many other places where the same thing happens.

I once used to attend evening classes in a school that used to do that! 

Most people (not Messey) seem to be answering as if this concerns fire exit doors and hence the concern is whether this will be a problem for evacuation. But the original question seemed to me to be related to the passive safety role of a fire door (not exit). However, I am not an expert on fire safety so maybe I am confused?

It would be useful if SBH could clarify, but I am concerned that others reading this thread would be confused like me.

Yes their integrity could be affected with aftermarket changes, but the doors would/could be treated as notional fire doors in this case.

If you have digilocks on designated exit routes with fire signage above them, this will very likely flag in your fire risk assessment as an issue unless there is a form of override in an emergency such as automatic release on activation of the fire alarm.