Loft conversion - need a fire door to fill a ground floor archway, any advice/recommendations please?

[soberton]

HI
The Architectural Surveyor visited Friday morning to take all the measurements/photos in preparation to do the plans for our loft conversion. We appreciate that all internal doors will need to be replaced for 30min fire doors which is fine. The present bedroom doors will be no loss anyway, they look nice being a traditional six panel design, but they are hollow/paper filled, if you look at them from the top. The real question is on the ground floor of our house, leading from the hallway into the kitchen we have an archway rather than a door. This is a boon on nice days because the house is east/west facing the sunlight floods through. The builder and architect have both said that a fire door needs to be put there (I guess they must be right) so I suppose it will have to be squared off and a normal door frame put in place or are there such things as doors to fit archways eg curved at the top - I can find plenty of normal doors with a curved raised pattern design at the top but that wasn't really what I was thinking of. That particular area would be very tight for another door because the archway and dining room doors are at a right angle to each other on one side then we have coat racks and understairs cupboard on the other side. The archictect did say that once it's signed off by building regs then we could just take the door off (which just seems to make a mockery of the whole process) I did say that probably would invalidate insurance, but he just said it was 'personal choice'.
Any recommendations for door companies/bespoke designs would be very appreciated.
TIA

[OnePlanOnHouzz]

the kitchen really needs a fire door to keep your family safe . if there's a fire in the kitchen - and you have taken off the door - it is more likely to spread upstairs and if you are unable to get out .... a bespoke door will be expensive - a bespoke fire door will be even more so!! I'd suggest you ask a local carpentry company to give you an idea of price to confirm this ! the upside if you do square off the arch is the door will match all of the others !!! please don't risk safety over aesthetics !! fire doors are advised for your safety !!!!!!

[InsertUsernameHere]

We made a door way in our arch and it looks lovely if in do say so myself we has the top of the arch turned into a window with fire rated pyro glass, and the bottom had an original door fitted (which will be upgraded when we finally get round to the loft conversion). You can get glazed firedoors. You may find you can build up the archway to make a standard size to be more economical (it being a relative turn, fire rated glass ain't cheap).

[Jcee]

We're in the process of having a loft conversion and had a similar issue as we have open plan downstairs with no doors.

However the architect gave the option of fire doors in all doorways or installing linked mains smoke detectors in all rooms.

We also had the same conversation of fit the doors and then remove them after the building regs visit, which we thought sounded daft, so we are going with the smoke detectors.

[soberton]

Thanks Jcee, that sounds like an interesting option. We don't mind changing the existing doors for new fire doors, it's just thinking about alternatives concerning the archway. Please may I ask, were the linked mains fire detectors particularly costly or difficult to fit? I wonder if those regs vary from area to area eg different councils etc?

[Jcee]

The smoke detectors were considerably cheaper than fire doors but you have the inconvenience (and associated mess!) of fitting/running electrics etc especially downstairs where otherwise you wouldn't have any work during a loft conversion.

Our design also incorporates a fire door at top of new stairs to new loft room.

I thought building regs were standard but I think it comes down to interpretation which might account for differences between different councils. We are in an outer London borough and are using a loft conversion company who do a lot of work in the area and their structural engineer/architect who did our designs said he was used to working with our council so knew what they would and would not accept. Could you seek advice from your council's building control dept?

We are into week 2 of our conversion....so far so good and I'm trying to ignore the mess and focus on the lovely room we'll get at the end....