The REAC Guru Bulletin Board

When are fire rated doors required in a multi family unit ? Is this determined by the number of units ?

Fire rated doors are generally required by local code in cases where it is desirable to isolate one area from another for purposes of preventing the spread of a fire. In residential use, you will probably find a fire rated door at the entry to a unit from a Common Area like a hallway, at the entry to a unit from a garage, and so on. Fire rated doors are more likely to also be self-closing – the idea being that we want that door to close and latch every time we open it, so it can function as intended to prevent a fire from spreading.

As far as the inspector is concerned, he or she is NOT enforcing code – he or she is only observing that the door is or is not fire rated and that it is or is not damaged or inoperable in some way. As a REAC inspector we would never cite a door as being “not fire rated as required,” we would not go there. However – let’s say we find a door that has been replaced… the door frame has a fire rating tag, indicating that there was a fire rated door here originally, but now we can see this was replaced with a non-fire-rated door. In that rare circumstance, we would cite this as a missing door.