Reasons Why You Need to Use Fire-Rated Floor Hatch

Floor hatches provide easy access to building professionals and services teams to systems and utilities, which include plumbing, and duct works under the floor. In some instances, the building’s mechanical and electrical rooms are in the underfloor area. In this instance, facilities will need a fire-rated floor hatch to protect the building and its occupants from possible fire emergencies.

This article will explain why you need floor hatches and their top five benefits.

Top 5 Benefits of Fire-Rated Floor Hatches

Manufacturers specifically design fire-rated floor hatches to efficiently help contain smoke, heat, and fire during fire emergencies. They also follow the nationally and locally regulated fire codes to prevent fire spread and keep everyone in the building safe.

Compliance

Following the fire-rated rules and regulations set by NFPA provides additional protection to the building owners from property damages and safety to the building occupants. Fire respondents and rescue teams can also benefit the complying with the building codes. It will make them quickly respond to the blazing fire as they already know the fire-rating code of the materials and how long they can hold before it spreads the fire.

In addition to that, since fire-rated floor hatches can hold the spread of fire for up to three hours, people inside the building can also evacuate on time with minimal risk of injury due to stampedes or smoke inhalation toxicity.

Complying with the fire codes also prepares the management, staff, and building occupants on what to do during fire occurrences. With an improved fire emergency preparedness program, occupants in a burning building will have a better chance of survival.

Quick Access to Systems

Most floor hatches have a removable panel feature that allows personnel to quickly access the plumbing system, duct works, and other services and utilities below the floor. These access doors have designs that will enable anyone to quickly open or close the panel, whether inside or outside the crawl space, basement, or underfloor plenum space, allowing them to exit swiftly during emergencies or check the systems during a scheduled routine check.

Moreover, the fire-rated floor hatches are customizable, best fitting your floor area’s preferred access opening, making them flexible and versatile access doors.

Accident Prevention

In general, all access doors and panels have an easy to install designs that do not require complex procedures and heavy equipment. Fire-rated floor hatches also have sturdy and advanced locking mechanisms, anti-skid surfaces, and other safety features as accident preventive measures to prevent people walking or accessing the access doors from getting into accidents.

However, if the location of the opening area or the surface that you are installing it into is a challenge, you may need to contact and hire a professional and skilled installer to mount the floor hatch.

Architectural Integrity

Fire-rated floor hatches have sturdy materials and well-planned designs that help maintain the building’s architectural integrity. It preserves the building’s style, original materials, and aesthetic appeal through its fire-spread prevention feature, which limits the building’s physical damage during fire accidents.

Aesthetics is vital in every building as it affects its overall appearance. Choosing a well-designed and fire-rated access door that seamlessly blends with the building’s interior design and aesthetics upholds and increases the building’s value. However, aesthetics must meet and not compromise the access door’s security and fire-rated features not to defeat its purpose.

Fire-rated floor hatches must strictly follow the essential rules and regulations imposed by NFPA and other safety governing bodies. When choosing the best access doors, only buy them from trusted suppliers. Otherwise, you might be paying more for minimal features and benefits.