Fire-Rated Doors & Assemblies

A complete assembly — door, frame, hinges, closer, latch and any glazing — tested and certified to hold a fire back for a set time. It carries a label from a certification body such as ULC or UL, and the label belongs to the whole assembly rather than to the leaf. Change one certified part for an uncertified one and the opening is no longer fire-rated, which is why fire doors are specified as assemblies and never assembled from spare parts.

20, 45, 60, 90 and 180 minutes are the standard ratings. Which one an opening needs is set by the fire separation it sits in, not by preference: the Ontario Building Code assigns a fire-resistance rating to the wall, and the door in it gets a matching closure rating. Some openings, notably in exit stairs, also carry a temperature-rise limit so the far face of the door stays cool enough to pass.

Monthly, and in full once a year. The Ontario Fire Code requires doors in fire separations to be inspected monthly and kept in working order, with any deficiency corrected. NFPA 80 adds a full inspection and test of every assembly at least once a year, documented and kept on site — it sets out what has to be checked and what counts as a failure. Our inspection page covers what that visit involves.

Almost always the things people do to make a door convenient. Held open with a wedge or a hook, painted over or missing labels, a closer removed or disconnected, a latch that does not throw, gaps at the frame outside the permitted range, holes drilled for a new lock or card reader, and glazing or kick plates that were never part of the listing. Fire and structural damage show up too, but the common failures are alterations, not accidents.

Only by a device that releases it. A fire-rated door has to close and latch by itself when the alarm sounds, so it cannot be wedged, tied or hooked open — but it can be held open legally on a magnetic hold-open or an electrified closer tied into the fire alarm, which releases the door on alarm. That is the correct fix for a door people keep propping, and it is usually less expensive than the deficiency it prevents.

Traditional wired glass is largely gone from new work. It passes the fire test but fails the impact requirement that now applies to hazardous locations, so new vision lites are typically fire-rated ceramic or specialty-glass products, filmed or laminated to meet impact as well. Wired glass already installed in an existing fire-rated door is generally allowed to remain until the door or the glazing is altered.

Many deficiencies are repairable within the listing — replacing a closer or latch with a certified equivalent, refitting hardware, correcting clearances, repairing a frame, and re-labelling in some cases. What cannot be repaired is an unauthorised field modification: a hole cut for a lock, a lite kit added after the fact, or a leaf cut down to fit a new floor. Those are replacement, because there is no legitimate way to restore the listing.

Typically 4–6 weeks to produce a labelled door and frame once the shop drawings are approved, then 1–2 weeks to schedule the job and install it, depending on the size of the project. Certified assemblies are made to order with the hardware prep in the leaf, so the schedule is set by the fabrication rather than the installation. Inspections and most repairs, by contrast, are scheduled in days. Hanging a single labelled door and frame is usually a day on site; a building's worth of rated openings on a new build is scheduled over several weeks with the general contractor.