The doors of your home have a huge responsibility to keep your entire family safe from every mishap or accident that might happen. The doors have to keep the intruders out. However, they also have to be up to the mark to protect you in case there is an accident within the house. These doors are meant to provide a safer exit option to the family members in case there is an accident or a fire within the home premises.
With this in mind, let’s evaluate why you need to upgrade the door between your garage and your home to a fire rated doors option.
The Door Between Your Garage And Your Home- Key Expectations
This particular door is one of the exits from your house. Think about it, if you are trapped in an accidental fire within your home, you will have to consider all of your first floor windows and doors as possible exit options. However, people often forget about the fact that the door leading to your garage can also be considered an exit because it will eventually lead you out of the house. If the door between your home and garage is fire resistant, it can give you a chance to immediately evacuate to your garage from your home and then to the relative safety outside.
Requirements For Garage And Home Separations
Even the building codes state that the door separating your garage and your home should provide extra protection. As such it should either be a metal or solid wood door of more than 1-3/8 inches of thickness. The door should have an automatic opening and closing mechanism as well. In this scenario a fire rated door fulfils all of these conditions and is much safer because it can be segregated into 20 minute, 90 minutes and 120 minute fire ratings. What this means is that these doors can remain cool for these time brackets. These doors also prevent fire and smoke from spreading through them.
Added Advantage Of A Fire Rated Door Between The Garage And The Home
Your vehicles or car fuel stored in the garage can also be a fire hazard. More importantly, if there is a carbon monoxide leak from your running car, the fire rated doors can also prevent the spreading of this undetectable gas throughout the home. This is a poisonous gas which can be a silent killer. As such, having a fire rated door between the garage and your home can be a protection from both sides.
There is really no reason why you should not consider having a fire rated door installed in key exit points of the house. However, even if you do not cover every possible exit, you should definitely invest in installing it between your garage and your home.
