Technical Tuesday updates

Failure of any one spring, cable, drive chain, drive gear, or internal gearbox must be protected such that, at the point of the failure, either the door has a resulting static weight of 20kg or less, or the door will not fall back more than 300mm, and be prevented from further use. Some door designs do not need safety devices to achieve this. In the case of automatically operating doors, it is acceptable for the door to close at normal speed and under full control, then be prevented from further use by use of fault sensing systems. For further guidance read TS 013. 

When a new powered garage door is supplied, it must comply with two pieces of product safety criminal legislation: Supply of Machinery (Safety) Regulations in the UK (or the Machinery Directive in the EU) & the Construction Products Regulations in the UK (or the Construction Products Regulation in the EU). These two pieces of criminal product safety legislation make it a legal requirement for the door to have undergone type testing to ensure that it will be safe for users. It must be prevented from squashing a person and protected against falling back should its balancing system suffer a failure. For further guidance read DHF's 'Safety of your new automated garage door'.

Since July 2013, the Construction Products Regulations (CPR) has required that, before new industrial and garage doors are placed on the market, they must be type tested and declare a performance for structural strength, operating force (powered doors), safe opening (fall back protection for vertically acting doors) and where they will be external, resistance to wind load.  The manufacturer must issue a declaration of Performance and conformity mark the door accordingly.  For further guidance read TS 013. 

The Supply of Machinery (Safety) Regulations, Construction Products Regulations, Workplace Regulations and the Health and Safety at Work Act place responsibilities on stakeholders to ensure that vertically acting doors are safe, which includes fall-back protection. Therefore, installation and maintenance companies should check that vertically acting doors they install or maintain have adequate protection to protect their own and their client’s legal obligations.  EN 12453 (powered doors) and EN 12604 (manual doors) have described the requirements in detail since 2000 with very little change in the last 23 years. For further guidance read TS 013 or attend a dhf training course. 

The minimum level of safety deemed acceptable by health & safety legislation is described variously as the ‘state-of-the-art’ or “reasonably practicable” precautions, depending on the exact environment and jurisdiction. The ‘state-of-the-art’ standards permit four main strategies for controlling hazards:                                Safe design (structural integrity, elimination of hazards, guards, electrical & control system integrity) – always the 1st priority, human visual control (hold-to-run), safe contact (force limitation) and non-contact (presence detection that prevents hazardous contact). For further guidance read TS 013