Question about fire door inspections

[Amarzano42]

Which occupancy is required to have annual fire door inspections?

[GWiens2001]

Which occupancy is required to have annual fire door inspections?

Different locations have different requirements.

Gordon

[jimu57]

NFPA 80 states periodic inspection not less than annual. Some AHJ may recommend semi annual.

[Tyler J. Thomas]

Which occupancy is required to have annual fire door inspections?

All occupancies if the state, county, city, whatever has adopted NFPA 80.

NFPA 80 requires annual fire door/assembly inspections; it doesn't restrict it to occupancy type. NFPA 101 and the IBC have occupancy types and classifications but neither directly requires fire door/assembly inspections.

[unjust]

yup, and alot of them you just don't notice, as the marshall will walk through, spot check a number of the extinguishers to see that they've been all serviced at the same time, poke the em lights and eyeball a few doors. I'm not sure i've seen a full building/tennancy inspection other than at change of occupancy for a larger multi floor space.

that said, i know a lot of jurisdictions where commercial property inspections are only done on change of occupancy, and then every 3-5 years. I know a few that are something like 3 mo, 6 mo, 1, 3, 5 year intervals (if you don's screw up, they check less) I also know at least one that is every 6-9 months with more frequent spot inspections.

the last is a high tourist use, high property/employee churn rate area so the AHJ really has to stay on top of people not doing stupid stuff- if they don't, then a no-remodel (no permit needed) store will pop up in a storefront and fill the entire back room full of boxes of t-shirts and and hoverboards while blocking the doors with displays of nail varnish.

[Tyler J. Thomas]

yup, and alot of them you just don't notice, as the marshall will walk through, spot check a number of the extinguishers to see that they've been all serviced at the same time, poke the em lights and eyeball a few doors. I'm not sure i've seen a full building/tennancy inspection other than at change of occupancy for a larger multi floor space.

that said, i know a lot of jurisdictions where commercial property inspections are only done on change of occupancy, and then every 3-5 years. I know a few that are something like 3 mo, 6 mo, 1, 3, 5 year intervals (if you don's screw up, they check less) I also know at least one that is every 6-9 months with more frequent spot inspections.

the last is a high tourist use, high property/employee churn rate area so the AHJ really has to stay on top of people not doing stupid stuff- if they don't, then a no-remodel (no permit needed) store will pop up in a storefront and fill the entire back room full of boxes of t-shirts and and hoverboards while blocking the doors with displays of nail varnish.

The college I worked at had the Fire Marshal on campus once a month. He'd tackle a building or two a month and work his way down the list with each visit. When he reached the bottom, he started all over.

I kept those fire door assemblies in tip top shape so he and I got along very well. I also tried to pull him aside each visit and discuss "hypothetical" life safety dilemmas we may or may not have on campus and to ask him how he would prefer they were handled. Funny enough those dang dilemmas always seemed to manifest and I'll be danged if I didn't handle them per his instruction.

Fire Marshal's are the good guys. I've never met one I didn't enjoy working with.

[unjust]

Most i've worked with have been great. i had one who was an absolute twit though.

i was the technical director of a small theatre that needed to have every stage production inspected as one of the fire exits was across the stage (sets had to provide access, and have appropriate signage - usually this was just a side door through the proscenium) aside from requiring that *every* paint on the stage contain fire retardant (even if it was on metal) dude would occasionally demand to flame test things. I had to make sure that a) we saved off cuts of lumber and fabric to paint/treat, even if it was a manufactured with fire retardant tag on item, and b) that the idiot didn't actually light our stage on fire. Rather than do the flame applied and removed to determine self extinguishing that code spells out, this yahoo would leave a flame on something until it burned through, then keep moving his flame around to burn more of it and claim it wasn't passing. he actually tried to light hanging curtains on fire because he didn't believe that their brand new sewn on by manufacturer with matching paper certificate fire tags were valid. he never understood that fire retardant != fire proof.

the Idiot also told me and a toocleverbyhalf carpenter for a show renting our space (their theatre company came in, i just had to liaison with folks and make sure they weren't damaging anything, or doing anything unsafe) that the set i had just deemed unsafe and shut down the production was fine. to prove it was safe, the carpenter jumped up on the edge of his 1/2" plywood platform framed with 12' long 2x4s every 2' and lightly bounced once on it. he only blew out 2 of the 3 plies into splinters below him and left indented boot prints in the last ply. they both conceded that it may not be safe. on the plus side of that one, i only ever had to bring up that inspection for the inspector to defer to me if something was safely built (more i only had to say "do you really think the chief want's to be reminded again that you signed off xyz before it broke when i hand him engineering drawings for this set and ask him to do the inspection?" at which point he'd say that he thought the calculations were probably fine and he'd trust me just this once).