What is a fire damper?
A fire damper is a device fitted where a duct passes through a fire-resisting wall or floor. It closes automatically in a fire so the duct does not carry fire and smoke into the next compartment.
A ventilation duct is a deliberate hole through a compartment wall, sized for airflow. The damper is what makes that hole acceptable, by closing it when the compartmentation is needed.
Dampers are mechanical and they seize. They sit inside ducts in ceiling voids and plant areas, they are rarely operated, and a damper that has not moved in ten years frequently will not move when it is asked to.
Testing them requires access, which is the reason they are so often omitted from maintenance regimes. A damper with no access panel cannot be tested, and that is itself a finding.
In practice
A damper that has never been tested since installation.
Access to it requires lifting a ceiling in an occupied office, which is why it has not happened.
Dampers are mechanical devices that seize, and access provision is the thing that determines whether they are ever tested.
A building designed without access panels has designed out its own maintenance regime.
What goes wrong in practice
- No access panels, so dampers cannot be reached or tested at all.
- Assumed to be covered by the ventilation service contract when they are not.
- Drop tests recorded as a batch with no identification of which dampers were actually tested.