Door gaps change over time due to building movement, wear, or poor adjustments. Even compliant installations can drift outside acceptable limits. This makes regular inspection essential. Discussions - Why gaps around fire doors are important often focus on real fire scenarios where smoke spread occurred due to excessive clearances. Addressing these issues early helps preserve compartmentation and maintains the intended level of fire protection throughout the building.

I’ve noticed this issue before on multi-story buildings, and it seems like no matter how carefully fire doors are installed, the gaps often end up inconsistent over time. Changes in humidity, temperature, and even the building settling can make the clearances vary from floor to floor. Inspectors tend to flag it repeatedly because even small gaps can affect how the door performs in a fire, so it keeps coming up as a compliance issue even if everything was fine at the initial installation.

Fire door gaps might seem like a small detail, but they’re actually really important for safety. Even a tiny gap that’s too big can let smoke and flames spread more quickly during a fire, reducing the time you have to escape. On one project I worked on, we spent extra time measuring and adjusting each door to make sure the gaps were consistent and within regulations, and it made a big difference in the overall safety of the building. It’s one of those things that feels minor until you realize how much it protects everyone inside.

When our building underwent a post-occupancy review, it quickly became clear that door gaps were never consistent across floors, and it caused a lot of head-scratching among the team. The thing that really helped put it into perspective was learning how fire door clearances affect overall safety in practice, especially when small variations can compromise performance. I found a really helpful explanation in the middle of this guide on https://www.fields-builds.com/blog/cutting-costs-avoiding-delays-constructability-reviews hat showed why inspectors keep flagging this as a recurring issue, even on newer buildings. It made the compliance problem much easier to understand.