Fire Shutters & Fire Curtains

A rolling steel curtain that sits above an opening in a fire-rated wall and drops to close it when a fire is detected. Day to day it rolls up out of the way, which is the point: it protects openings far too wide for a swinging fire door — service counters, mall and atrium fronts, wide corridors and industrial openings — without getting in the way of how the space is used. The whole assembly is listed and labelled, curtain, guides, brackets and release together.

What the curtain is made of. A fire shutter is interlocking steel slats, rolling on a barrel like an ordinary rolling steel door. A fire curtain is a flexible fire-resistant fabric on a roller, much lighter and much less obtrusive, and it can cover very large or irregular openings — atria, escalator wells and mall fronts — where the weight and headroom of a steel curtain do not work. Both are listed assemblies; the choice is set by the opening and by what the structure above it will carry.

Either a fusible link or the fire alarm. The traditional release is a fusible link in the curtain's mechanism that melts at a set temperature and lets the curtain descend under gravity, its speed controlled by a governor. The modern arrangement is an automatic closing device tied to the alarm system, which drops the curtain when the alarm sounds and can also be interfaced with smoke detection. Many assemblies have both.

Annually, and by drop test. NFPA 80 requires fire door assemblies — rolling shutters and curtains included — to be inspected and tested at least once a year, on top of the monthly checks the Ontario Fire Code requires; for a rolling assembly the annual test means releasing it and letting it close under its own power to confirm it actually will. The test is documented, and the assembly is reset afterwards. It is the one test people skip, and it is the one that finds shutters painted, obstructed or seized in their guides.

That is a service call, not a repair project, in most cases. After an activation the release has to be reset — a fusible link replaced, or the automatic closing device rearmed — and the assembly checked for damage before it is raised. What it must not be is forced back up or tied open, which is both a code violation and a good way to damage the curtain. We attend these as urgent calls because the opening is usually blocking a working part of the building.

Only if it is listed for both, and many are not. A fire shutter's job is to close on alarm; a security shutter's job is to be locked shut against entry. Assemblies exist that do both, and where an opening genuinely needs both functions that is what should be specified — but hanging a lock on a fire shutter, or expecting a security shutter to hold a fire, is how buildings end up with an opening that fails at whichever job it is asked to do first.

Yes. Where the opening is used daily — a service counter, a servery, a shipping opening — the shutter is motorised for ordinary use and still drops on release for fire. The motor is not what closes it in a fire: the assembly has to descend under gravity with the power off, which is why the governor and the release are the parts that get tested.

Typically 4–6 weeks to produce the assembly once the shop drawings are approved, then 1–2 weeks to schedule the job and install it, depending on the size of the project. Shop drawings matter more here than on a swinging door: the headroom, the side room for the guides and the structural support above the opening all have to be confirmed before anything is made. Installing one shutter is usually a day on site, plus the drop test before it is handed over.