Token Doors and Painful Truths
Among the topics that pain us most in this industry, and unfortunately the ones most often abused, fire doors are at the very top. In a city like Istanbul, where vertical architecture, giant plazas and multi-storey complexes are rising at a rapid pace, the doors that open onto fire escapes are not accessories or mere procedural items installed just to pass municipal inspection. Those doors are the armor of the single escape tunnel that hundreds of people in a building will cling to for life in the moment of disaster.
Sold on the market under the name Istanbul fire door, there are thousands of death traps that amount to nothing more than a wafer-thin sheet of steel painted red with a cheap panic bar bolted on. These products, which buckle and melt within minutes when they meet fire and which jam and fail to open when their handle is pressed in a moment of panic, are the greatest betrayal that can be inflicted on a building. Behind a genuine fire door lies a great deal of serious thermodynamics and materials science.
Smoke Kills Before the Flames
Fire brigade reports reveal a very clear truth: the vast majority of casualties in fires occur not through direct contact with the flames, but through the inhalation of toxic carbon monoxide smoke. For this reason, it is essential that the fire doors we manufacture are a flawless barrier not only against fire but also against smoke. At the joints between the frame and the leaf, we use special "intumescent" seals that remain flexible at normal room temperature but, when the ambient temperature rises above 100 degrees, suddenly enter a chemical reaction and swell to 10-15 times their normal volume. By swelling, these seals close off every gap between the door and the frame like concrete; they completely block the flames and toxic smoke from seeping into the fire stairwell.
The Meaning of EI60 and EI120 Certification
Whether a door is fire-resistant is not determined by a craftsman's eyeballing it, but by international test laboratories. Our doors are tested by being exposed to temperatures above 1000 degrees in special furnaces. Thanks to the high-density non-combustible rock wool and special plasterboard panels we use in the door's inner core, even when the corridor is engulfed in flames, the temperature on the other side of the door is kept at a level that allows people to escape. A structure that prevents the flames from passing to the other side for 60 minutes or 120 minutes is precisely this layered marvel of engineering.
When choosing a door for your building's fire exits, deciding based solely on the price tag is gambling with human life. We continue to build certified, genuinely tested, fully equipped systems whose panic bars never lock up.
