Compliance Made Easy
Welcoming with open doors
at Missionaries of Charity
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.
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.
Between 50 and 65 homeless people are fed at each meal, with Colin said: “The Missionaries of Charity building has a hard-wired
around 10 others serving and clearing away. The dining room is fire alarm system serving the whole building. Andy placed his
located in the basement, with access doors from the corridor and demo Transmitter on top of fire alarm panel which is on the
to the commercial kitchen and store room. ground floor. We walked around all 18 doors that needed Dorgard
Pro and the transmitter linked to all of them, whether they
With so many people in the basement at mealtimes, it’s a very busy were in the basement, on the ground floor or the first floor. I was
area. To avoid the room feeling hot and stuffy and to keep foot traffic very impressed.”
flowing, the doors were held open on hooks.
“I had looked at a hardwired magnet system but the cost was
When the local fire inspector visited the premises he advised that the phenomenal. As well as buying the magnets themselves, there’s
hooks on fire doors were not compliant with fire regulations the expense and disruption of raggling cables into the walls and
and needed to be removed. A solution was needed to hold the then all the decorating costs on top of that.”
fire doors open legally and safely, as keeping them closed
all the time was not practical in such a bustling environment.
“Dorgard Pro was far and away the best option. I was
new to the product but I easily installed it myself — it’s
Colin Beer, owner of CJ Solutions was asked to find the answer.
not rocket science! It really is a very good system.”
He spoke to Fireco, who sent an engineer to do a survey of the
Missionaries of Charity building.
“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.”
Colin said: “Everything is working fine. We’ve tested them by
setting off the fire alarm and Dorgard Pro released the doors
Colin said: “I looked at a number of different options with automatically. The sisters are happy because the fire officer is
Andy, the Fireco engineer. For what was needed in the happy, so they can tick another task off the list! Dorgard Pro does
building, we decided that Dorgard Pro would work best.” what it says on the tin. It’s very good.”
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