Fire rated commercial doors installed correctly? - Contractor Talk - Professional Construction and Remodeling Forum

shaane · 08-26-2009, 10:35 PM

I have a question for you guys. I recently installed tile in a hotel in Colorado, when the doors were ready for installation they discovered that the metal frame was too narrow for the overall with of the finished walls. They had a 2x6 stud, on the hallway side was a layer of celotex followed by a layer of drywall. On the inside of the rooms was a layer of drywall. Instead of ordering new metal casings they simply cut the drywall exposing the studs and headar and screwed the metal directly to the stud, then trimmed out the ugly gap with pine board painted to match the brown metal casing. Doesn't this compromise the fire (time) rating of the door??? Is this legal according to code? The reason I ask it that it passed, and the hotel is open

slowforthecones · 08-26-2009, 11:03 PM

Is this cooridor a rated corridor? Did the inspector perform a smoke test? Did the inspector perform such inspection after they added the trim pine board? Are the gaps between the pine and bare stud filled with fire chaulk?

If the answer is NO, then yes what they did compromised the rating of the cooridor assembly.

cleveman · 08-26-2009, 11:38 PM

Yeah, sounds like some cheating going on.

The firedoors I have experience with have split jamb trim and will accomodate just about everything. And they are darn good doors. No reason to cheat on them.

Haaser · 08-27-2009, 12:08 AM

In North Carolina, everything has a fire rating even a sheet of paper. It sounds retarded, but its true.

Now that said. It depends on what the prescribed rating was for the wall. I don’t know about CO. but I am thinking if it’s a interior corridor it was most likely a 90min wall w/sprinklers??
As far as I know (and I don’t) they should have stuffed the void with roc-wool and then could have covered it with the plywood and still maintained the rating of the wall… if that’s not the case then most likely they cut a big corner..

probly could have returned them and got the correct size. A good crew can put around 100 or so KD frames a day..

slowforthecones · 08-27-2009, 03:10 AM

What they did is what keeps guys like us here on CT employed. It's great to know hacks like that are still around because when a fire hits..they will do a analysis on why the fire spread so quickly. They'll be calling in a CT member to rebuild everything and build it properly.

superdave111a · 09-11-2009, 05:14 PM

i dont know about anywhere else, but in md if it is not a ul assembly then it's not fire rated