Ahmarra Manufactures Q-Mark Fire Doors for Octavia House School in Essex
Client: Octavia House School
Type of works: Manufacture of FD30 Fire Doorsets
Ahmarra manufactured fire doorsets for Octavia House School, an independent specialist therapeutic school based in Great Baddow, Essex. Doors were designed for classrooms, offices, toilets and communal spaces such as corridors and halls.
Octavia House School provides education and therapy for pupils aged 5 to 16 that have suffered adverse childhood experiences. The pupils benefit from a therapeutic curriculum that focuses on meeting their social, emotional, mental health and academic needs.
These fire doorsets were selected from our Education Range – a sector-specific range of made-to-measure doorsets developed to meet the demands of school, college, academy and university environments. As with all of our Education Range, these pre-hung doorsets were supplied with factory-fitted stainless steel ironmongery, ensuring full compliance.
Ahmarra is committed to sustainable working practices and is FSC® certified (FSC C018847), which means all of these doors and frames support responsible forestry. Doors were designed for areas of heavy footfall, as such they have a severe-duty core, are lipped on all four edges for longevity, and have kick and push plates to protect the door facings.
Each fire door features a Q-Mark identification plug – signifying that the door has achieved BM Trada third-party certification. The outer circle of the plug denotes the period of fire resistance, which in this case is yellow, signifying that the doors have an FD30 fire rating – meaning that they have been specified to resist the passage of fire for a minimum of 30 minutes. The plug with the silver tree signifies it is a certified factory hung doorset, whilst the doors with vision panels feature an additional plug with the orange tree that signifies it has certified factory fitted glazing.
The client selected colourful Formica F6901 Vibrant Green, F8820 Leaf Green, F4177 Lime and F8755 Lemon high pressure laminate facings, in line with the Octavia brand’s colour scheme. These vivid laminate facings offer a stylish and contemporary contrast to the lacquered American White Oak concealed lippings, as well as the cloak (bolection) beading where doors have vision panels.
Many of the timber doors feature an integral finger guard, which covers the gap between the doors and their frames, ensuring fingers cannot be trapped. Finger protection is a compulsory safety requirement in accordance with the Department for Education’s Design Brief (November 2020), which states that new doors in areas used by young children should have finger guards.
Ahmarra also manufactured a doorset with a fire-rated glazed side screen for one of the offices. The screen frame was primed at our factory, ready for on-site painting.
Richard Leonard, Director of Octavia House Schools, said, “Having been involved in the development of several schools, I can say that Ahmarra’s fire rated doorsets have been the best quality doors I’ve seen – Ahmarra’s product and service is outstanding! The Estimators & Project Management team were very helpful at every stage. School staff have commented on how nice the doors look, and the vibrant choice of laminate colour is a real statement. I definitely plan to use Ahmarra again for future projects.”
