By code, buildings such as industrial, school and public buildings require fire and smoke barrier opening protectives. Due to the simplistic operation and known designs of swing door exit hardware, side-hinged swinging doors are commonly used.
However, code rated side-hinged swinging doors are not always the desired design choice to meet code requirements. For structures needing higher occupancy fire/smoke protection requirements, multiple swing doors and/or banks of swing doors and their associated frame assemblies are used. The framing requirements of multiple doors and/or banks of doors present architectural challenges for building designers.
In an attempt to overcome these challenges, a variety of door designs have been developed. One known design uses up to two swinging fire door and frame assemblies that store in pockets perpendicular to the opening. A second known design includes a bank of swinging fire door and frame assemblies that are attached to the bottom of a coiling door. Although these designs include commonly accepted side-hinge swinging doors, they require significantly more head or side room clearances and cost more to manufacture than earlier designs.
Another known design uses commonly accepted side-hinge swinging doors in an accordion folding fire door configuration. However, this design requires side stack space for the folded accordion door and non-folding side-hinge swinging door(s). Because occupancy load determines the amount of door opening/number of required doors, each required side-hinge swinging door mandates additional side stack space, thereby reducing the overall free space and presenting construction challenges.
Accordingly, there remains a continuing need for improved combined emergency egress and fire/smoke barrier designs. The present invention fulfills this need and further provides related advantages.