Hotels seem to be notorious for fire door issues…here’s a perfect example that was found by Chad Jenkins of the National Locksmithing Institute. Chad wrote:
“This hotel has a laundry chute that has self-closing devices on the chute doors. They are secured behind a fire rated self-closing storage room door (label has been painted over). The arrangement of the door swing allows employees to use one door to prop open the other creating a chimney throughout the building. You will also see a sign above the rated laundry chute door that reminds people to ensure the door closes. The manager of the hotel did say they would send out a memo to their staff to address this issue.”
Here’s the condition on the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th floors:
And the first floor:
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Good picture
Faster loading!!
Termination room chute opening has no requirement
The room itself does
707.13.4 Termination room.
Refuse and laundry chutes shall discharge into an enclosed room separated from the remainder of the building by a fire barrier that has a fire-resistance rating of not less than 1 hour. Openings into the termination room shall be protected by opening protectives having a fire protection rating of not less than ¾ hour. Doors shall be self- or automatic closing upon the detection of smoke in accordance with Section 715.4.7.3. Refuse chutes shall not terminate in an incinerator room. Refuse and laundry rooms that are not provided with chutes need only comply with Table 508.2.
Looks like a digital access lock propping the door open…. Use the tools available….
If the lock has multiple user capability and audit trail, issue individual codes for each person and audit who is leaving the door open…
Chutes look to be an easy mount and probably reversible… Maybe reversing the hand could reduce the issue.
Just my two cents….
Two Sam’s Think alike, I immediately thought the same thing, monitor the Audit Trails with individual Id’s, and reverse the Chute door to eliminate this occurance, Think of the bigger picture folks Chutes and Shafts a weak points in Buildings where the spread of fire is transmitted between floors quicker making access onto these levels by fire crew a nightmare!
The picture of the use chute to block the entrance door into the inlet room as a form of “wedge” is one problem. NFPA 101 Life Safety Code 2000 edition which the Center for Medicare/Medicaid Services (CMS) is currently basing inspections upon for the State agencies that typically are contracted to perform inspections for CMS, would find the enclosure room door being inoperative a deficiency. We have 10 story trash and linen chutes. The chute itself is enclosed in a shaft with 2 hour construction. The doors are fire rated at 1.5 hours. Those who inspect us would also cite us for the breach of the floor to floor separation created by the door connecting the discharge room to the inlet door. On the second photo, it is not easy to determine this from the picture but many of the doors I have encountered durng my career that are horizontal self closing with a fusable link as the release mechanism. You can see from the picture that linen sometimes subverts the process.
Incidentally, if our inspecting authorities encounter a required fire rated door such as this one defining the one hour fire resistive enclosure of the shaft inlet room, they would cite the pictured enclosure door as unrated – AND write it as a separate deficiency. We would of course object since there is obviously a label under the paint on the door to which they would reply: “Any label that is not readable because it is covered by paint obviously is not getting an adequate yearly inspection because you don’t even know if it is rated properly!” It is hard to convince them that it was “just painted”. Been there.
Gerald,
It does not matter when that label was painted. The fact is, a missing or obscured label does not meet the standard. That opening could be textbook perfect in every aspect except for that label, and it would still fail.
Are there listed products available for Trash Chute doors? or is the hardware not
required to be listed on the door.
There are listed trash chute doors…I’m not sure about individual components.
– Lori