Where a wall or ceiling forms part of a fire compartment, any access panel in it must hold the same rating. Our fire rated range includes 1 hour and 2 hour panels for walls and ceilings, with metal or plasterboard doors, intumescent seals and locking options to suit commercial projects. Tell us your required rating and orientation and we will match the panel.
Where a wall or ceiling forms part of a fire compartment, cutting an opening into it creates a weak point. A fire rated access panel closes that opening back up, so the compartment keeps doing its job while the services behind it stay reachable.
Two measures of performance matter. Integrity, written as E in the European classification, is the ability to hold back flame and hot gas for a stated period. Insulation, written as I, is the ability to limit the temperature rise on the face away from the fire, so the panel does not become hot enough to ignite what is touching it. A panel described as EI60 does both for sixty minutes. A panel described as E60 resists the passage of flame only. The older British way of describing the same thing is a duration in minutes of integrity, which is where the familiar 1 hour and 2 hour labels used across this range come from.
The practical rule is straightforward. The panel should carry at least the rating asked of the construction it sits in, and it needs to be installed the way the manufacturer sets out, because the frame, the seals and the fixings are all part of the tested arrangement. If you are not sure what the wall or ceiling has been specified to achieve, take the figure from the fire strategy for the building rather than from the panel already fitted next door.
Every panel here is fire rated, so what is left to decide is duration, door face, frame type, opening shape and any extra performance the room needs.
One hour panels cover most compartment walls and ceilings in housing, offices and light commercial work. Two hour panels are specified where the compartment itself is rated for longer, typically around protected stairs, plant rooms and service shafts in larger buildings. Take the duration from the specification, not from the panel already on site.
A metal door is the hard wearing choice for plant rooms, risers and corridors where the panel gets opened regularly. A plasterboard faced door is made to be finished into the surrounding surface, so it reads as part of the wall or ceiling once taped, jointed and skimmed. Compare fire rated metal door panels with fire rated plasterboard door panels.
A beaded frame carries a perforated flange that keys into plaster or jointing compound, which suits new work being finished after the panel goes in. A picture frame sits on the face of the finished surface and covers the cut edge, which makes it the simpler retrofit into a surface that is already decorated.
Circular fire rated panels are available with a metal door and picture frame, and with a plasterboard faced door and beaded frame. They suit openings formed around round ductwork or in downlight positions.
One panel in the range is a 1 hour fire rated unit that is also airtight, smoke tested and acoustic rated at 30dB, supplied with a picture frame. Consider it where the partition carries an acoustic requirement, or where air leakage matters alongside fire performance.
Orientation changes what a panel has to resist. In a wall, fire arrives sideways against the door and frame. In a ceiling, hot gas collects against the panel from below and the door has to stay in its frame while it is being pushed on from underneath. Because of that, the duration a given panel achieves is not automatically the same in both positions, so check the rating stated for the orientation you are fitting into rather than assuming one figure covers both.
Direction matters as well. A panel in a protected corridor is normally there to resist a fire in the room behind it, while a panel into a service shaft may need to resist a fire starting inside the shaft and pushing outwards into the escape route. Where the opening is into a vertical riser rather than a shallow service void, a purpose built door is usually the right answer instead of an access panel. Our riser doors are built for that duty, in single and double leaf configurations and made to the height you need.
If the opening is unusual, or the combination of orientation and rating is not covered by a standard panel, send us the details and we will tell you what can be supplied.
The seals around a fire rated panel are what turn a steel box into a fire resisting closure. Intumescent seals sit in or against the frame and expand as they heat up, filling the gap between door and frame while both move. Smoke seals do a different job at a much lower temperature, restricting cold smoke leakage through that same gap in the early stages of a fire, which is what protects an escape route while people are still using it. Both need to be left intact. Painting over an intumescent seal, or trimming one back so a door closes more easily, undoes the arrangement the panel was tested in.
The most common reason a small fire rated panel appears in a home is a concealed gas flue. Where a flue runs through a void, boxing or a ceiling, inspection openings are needed so the flue joints can be seen and checked, and where that void sits in a fire compartment the panel closing it has to hold the rating. Our guide on gas flue inspection access panels covers the positioning question in more detail. Anything to do with the flue itself belongs with a registered gas engineer.
On repeat work, the 1 hour fire rated panels are available in multipacks of ten and fifteen, carrying a ten per cent and a fifteen per cent multipack discount respectively. That suits maintenance contracts, snagging schedules and any job where the same size recurs floor by floor, rather than reordering singles at full price each time a new plot comes up.
For specification work, our technical resources section holds the drawings and documents we publish for these ranges. If you need documentation for a particular panel to support a submission or a sign off, ask us and we will tell you exactly what is available for that product rather than sending a generic pack.
Where a schedule covers several ratings, orientations and sizes at once, it is usually quicker to send the whole thing over than to piece it together from the grid. Use request a specification quote with your sizes, the ratings required and whether each panel is going into a wall or a ceiling, and we will come back with the panels that match and a price for the full schedule.
