In nearly every major romantic comedy and family drama, there's always a scene with a set of French doors as a pivotal backdrop or feature. Growing up, that detail didn't go unnoticed for me. Instead, it cultivated a love and appreciation for French doors as a style choice and upgrade in most homes. In fact, when I bought my first house, the very first modification I made was to change the doors to the patio from sliding glass doors to French doors. I created this site to help share what I have long respected and loved about French doors in the hopes of helping others understand the value in this often underappreciated design feature.
As a business owner with your own building, you likely place great importance on maintaining the integrity and security of your workplace. One particular area that you might want to pay special attention to in order to protect your employees and your inventory would be fire safety. While most commercial buildings have a fire extinguisher or two and provide employees with mapped-out escape routes, there still might be more you could be doing to protect your business. Here's why your company might want to look into installing commercial fire-rated doors throughout your office or warehouse.
Limit the Damage
It can be hard to stop a fire once it gets going, but that's exactly what a fire-rated door is designed to do. Place one of these doors in between your main office and your storage area, and you may be able to slow or stop the spread of a fire before it gets to a critical area. A fire-rated door might be able to stop a fire from spreading from one floor to another as well.
Give Your Employees Safe Spaces or Time to Escape
When a fire consumes one floor, it is obviously important for your employees to get out of the building entirely if they can. But if the fire is such that employees become trapped in a hallway or stairwell, having fire-rated doors on every floor could give your employees some additional time to plan an escape or wait for a rescue. The fire-rated door will hopefully stop the fire from going into the stairwell, potentially keeping smoke and flames away from your employees as they huddle in what may be one of the only safe places in the building as they wait for the fire department to arrive.
Protect or Close Off Flammable Areas
Fire-rated doors may be especially important if you have a boiler room or another area with hazardous materials that could potentially catch fire. A fire-rated door can either stop flames from getting into the hazardous zone and causing a bigger issue or stop a fire that starts in that room from getting out and spreading to the rest of the building. If your company works with flammable or hazardous materials, consider putting all of these items in one place within the building in order to limit trouble if something does go wrong.
Contact a provider or installer of fire-rated doors today for more information.