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Welcoming with open doors at Missionaries of Charity

The customer

Missionaries of Charity is a religious congregation of nuns founded by Mother Teresa. It promises to give ‘wholehearted free service to the poorest of the poor’.

The Edinburgh Missionaries of Charity convent is a five-storey building in a picturesque Georgian crescent. Five days a week, the sisters and their volunteers provide meals to the homeless.

Between 50 and 65 homeless people are fed at each meal, with around 10 others serving and clearing away.

The dining room is located in the basement, with access doors from the corridor and to the commercial kitchen and store room.

Sector

Installer

Customer requirements

Meet the requirements of the Fire Inspector
Product provided
Dorgard Pro
"Everything is working fine. We’ve tested them by setting off the fire alarm and Dorgard Pro released the doors automatically. The sisters are happy because the fire officer is happy, so they can tick another task off the list! Dorgard Pro does what it says on the tin. It’s very good."
Colin Beer
Owner

THE PROBLEM

Fire Inspector warns of non-compliance

With so many people in the basement at mealtimes, it’s a very busy area. To avoid the room feeling hot and stuffy and to keep foot traffic flowing, the doors were held open on hooks.

When the local fire inspector visited the premises, he advised that the hooks on the fire doors were not compliant with fire regulations and needed to be removed. A solution was needed to hold the fire doors open legally and safely, as keeping them closed all the time was not practical in such a bustling environment.

the solution

Fireco tailor a system

Colin Beer, the owner of CJ Solutions, was asked to find the answer. He spoke to Fireco, who sent an engineer to do a survey of the Missionary of Charity building.

Colin said, “I looked at a number of different options with Andy, the Fireco Engineer. For what was needed in the building, we decided that Dorgard Pro would work best. “Dorgard Pro holds fire doors open, releasing them to close when the fire alarm sounds. It features a separate transmitter that is directly wired into the fire alarm panel.

“The Missionaries of Charity building has a hard-wired fire alarm system serving the whole building. Andy placed his demo transmitter on top of the fire alarm panel, which is on the ground floor. We walked around all 18 doors that needed Dorgard Pro, and the transmitter was linked to all of them, whether they were in the basement, on the ground floor, or on the first floor. I was very impressed.”

“Dorgard Pro was far and away the best option. I was new to the product, but I easily installed it myself — it’s not rocket science! It really is a very good system.”

“As it’s such an old building, some of the floors were a little uneven. We just installed a floor plate in these cases, and the Dorgard Pro units worked perfectly.”

“Another plus with Dorgard Pro is that it is directly connected to the fire alarm panel and radio-activated. It only releases the doors in the event of a fire alarm. Other systems I’ve seen react to loud noises and close the doors when you don’t want them to, which wouldn’t be suitable in the noisy environment of the dining room.”

Find out more about Dorgard Pro here

Dorgard Pro is a fire door retainer that holds open fire doors legally, allowing them to automatically close when an alarm is activated.

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