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Fire Watch

LGreene

LGreene

Registered User
Joined
Oct 20, 2009
Messages
1,154
Location
San Miguel de Allende, Mexico
NFPA 80 limits the types of field modifications that can be done to a fire door, and I've always heard that if additional work is required the door must be removed and taken to a UL/WH shop and then relabeled. I always wondered what happened with the big hole left by the missing door, and I was recently told that in this situation most AHJs would require a fire watch. I wrote a post on my blog about this requirement (http://idighardware.com/2012/04/fire-watch/) but couldn't find anything in NFPA 101 or the IFC that defined the duties of a fire watch. I found plenty of information online from various jurisdictions.

Two questions:

1) Is there a code or standard that outlines fire watch duties?

2) In your jurisdiction, who is qualified to perform a fire watch? Could it be an employee of the door company or the building owner, or would it need to be a fire official?
 
1) Is there a code or standard that outlines fire watch duties?2) In your jurisdiction, who is qualified to perform a fire watch? Could it be an employee of the door company or the building owner, or would it need to be a fire official?
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Both NFPA 1 and IFC define "fire watch" as:

(NFPA 1) 3.3.126 Fire Watch. The assignment of a person or persons to an area for the express purpose of notifying the fire department, the building occupants, or both of an emergency; preventing a fire from occurring; extinguishing small fires; or protecting the public from fire or life safety dangers.

(IFC) FIRE WATCH. A temporary measure intended to ensure continuous and systematic surveillance of a building or portion thereof by one or more qualified individuals for the purposes of identifying and controlling fire hazards, detecting early signs of unwanted fire, raising an alarm of fire and notifying the fire department.

Some Jurisdictions have developed specific ordinances expanding the watch to include fire apparatus and personnel but I would feel comfortable in saying that is a minority. Most permit the facility to perform the watch with responsible personnel and means to contact the FD. We go as far as requiring an hourly, daily and weekly log in addition to a minimum staff based on facility size and hazard of operation.
 
chris kennedy said:
Won't UL come to the site? They do for me to list luminaires.
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We can pay to have the doors and frames relabeled in the field but it's fairly expensive. Depending on whether the fire watch can be done by an employee of the building owner rather than fire personnel, it may be more cost effective.
 
Except in very rare cases I see any required "fire watch" just being an employee of the company, sometimes with special training which was specified by the company not the AHJ.
 
We wouldn't require a fire watch in this situation. We generally reserve it for situations where required fire alarms/sprinklers are off line for extended periods of time (more than a few hours, or any amount of time in R occupancies).

When we do require fire watch, we design it for the specific circumstance. We require that fire watch personnel have means to contact the FD, be at least 18 years of age, english-speaking, physically capable of the duties we assign them, and they can have no other duties beyond fire watch. If we require multiple personnel, we require them to have means of communicating with each other.

Even for short durations with very direct and basic instructions, fire watch can be extremely unreliable. Implementing one for a couple of weeks while waiting for a door repair would be an effort in futility, in my opinion. If I were that concerned, I'd disallow removal of the door and tell them to have the repair made in the field (cost isn't my problem - I didn't modify the door), or I'd tell them to order a new door and leave the existing one in place for the time being. In reality, very few situations would cause me that much concern . . . ;)
 
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