Bilal ÜNALMIS-Vital Elevator R&D Manager

As Vital Asansör, our priority is high quality and customer satisfaction. In this context, we emphasize quality rather than price in our products. We have been manufacturing elevator automatic landing and cabin doors for many years. Our elevator doors have a certain place in the industry. But our main focus is to provide our customers with complete elevator solutions. Since we carry out more export-oriented works, we plan our package elevator service down to the smallest part and present it to our customers with high quality.

Our company is constantly increasing the necessary infrastructure and production standards in order to provide better quality and faster service to its customers. Our company, which attaches great importance to technical support at every stage of production and after production, directs its R&D studies by considering customer satisfaction.

As Vital Asansör, we started the sector with the manufacture of elevator automatic doors. Most of our customers still define us as a door company. Naturally, due to the excess of experience, our area of expertise has been elevator automatic doors. Today, we offer complete elevator solutions and manufacture many elevator components in-house. However, elevator doors form the basis of our business.

Our R&D unit meticulously monitors the certification processes related to doors. We have separate fire resistance certificates for our central and telescopic landing doors (EN81-58, E120). We have CE certificates for our landing and cabin doors, as well as EAC documents that we have recently received for the Eurasian region. In addition, as a result of the tests we had done in Russia last year for the Eurasian region, we have EI60 and E30 fire resistance certificates, unlike the Eurasia region. It is in our Module C2 documents, which we obtained by having our annual random interim inspections for CE documents. We also have the Pendulum test document for doors, which we received after the soft pendulum test. Our doors, which we produce by keeping the quality in the forefront, prove this by obtaining all the necessary certificates as can be seen.

We are a company that exports most of our products. Recently, our sales have been increasing in countries in the Russian region. However, Russia does not accept the European norms and certifications to which we are subject with the accompanying countries with which it has a customs union. These countries, which unite under the leadership of Russia under the name of the Eurasian Economic Union, determine the technical regulations and conformity of the products to be placed in the country markets of Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Armenia with the EAC.

Fire resistance requirements for elevator landing doors applied in the Eurasian Region
TR EAEU 043/2017: Contains safety requirements for fire safety and fire fighting vehicles. Elevator landing doors are also included in this scope. It came into full effect from January 2020. This technical regulation was developed to protect people, property, and the environment from fire and to prevent attempts to mislead consumers. Its provisions are mandatory for all member states of the Eurasian Economic Union. The technical regulations contain rules for the identification of fire safety and fire extinguishing equipment and provide both certification and declaration to confirm their conformity.

The main reason for the requirement of fire resistance in elevator doors is to prevent the spread of fire to other floors via the elevator shaft when a fire breaks out on any floor of the building. The part that separates the elevator shaft from the building floors is the elevator landing doors, so it undertakes this task. Since the purpose is the same, although the test methods are basically close to each other, the test and certification parts in practice in Eurasia and Europe show slight differences. For example, while testing and certification is carried out separately for each door type in the European region, a single certificate is issued in the Eurasia region, although the test is carried out separately for doors of the same series. E30 is sufficient for normal elevator doors over minimum requirements in the Eurasian region. In addition, EI60 is sufficient for firefighter elevators and insulated fire doors for elevators in high-rise buildings.
 
Fire resistance requirements for elevator landing doors applied in Europe and our country
In our country, the fire resistance of elevator landing doors is determined in accordance with the “Regulation on the Protection of Buildings from Fire” published in the Official Gazette. In this regulation, the conditions required for elevators are given under the title of "Section Six - Elevators". Here, the required fire resistance classes for elevator landing doors are defined. Here, it is emphasized that elevator landing doors should be fire resistant and smoke-proof for at least 30 minutes, and in buildings with a building height of 51.50 m, they should be fire-resistant and smoke-proof for at least 60 minutes. Fire resistance tests of elevator landing doors are carried out according to TS EN 81-58 (Elevators - Safety rules for construction and assembly - Inspection and tests - Part 58: Fire resistance test for landing doors) is carried out according to the standard.