Smoke Seals Tests

The building regulations and other fire safety legislation require certain doors to be smoke doors and have a smoke control function. These doors are described with a suffix “S”. Therefore a one hour fire door with a smoke control function would be described as a FD60S. Smoke seals are generally, but not always, incorporated within an intumescent PVC sleeve and placed between the junction of door and frame. Smoke seals are usually made of a brush or neoprene strip and are used to form a mechanical seal between the clearance gap required between a door and its frame. Their primary functions is to limit and restrict the passage of cold smoke through doorsets, The current test standard for smoke seals to fire door assemblies is BS476PART 31 BS EN 1634-3:2004

Most fatalities caused by fire outbreak in buildings are as direct result of smoke inhalation. It may be considered prudent to describe all circulation doors, or doors which can assist in compartmentation of the building, as smoke doors, thereby limiting the danger of the passage of cold smoke to other areas of a building. It is possible to have a smoke door which has no fire performance but in such doors, whereas details such as ironmongery and glass types used will not be so important, it should be installed and have clearance gaps similar to that permitted to BS 8214.

The test for cold smoke seals involves the fitting of the seals to a doorset which faces a chamber to which both positive and negative air pressure is applied (25Pa). The amount of gas added or extracted from the test chamber for the period of the test while maintaining the pressures can be described as leakage. Permitted values for this leakage are set out within the standard (3cuM per hour per lin M). During the test these performances are measured. If this is below the limit permitted by the standard a successful result may be achieved.