The Drop Test Your Building's Insurance Policy Actually Requires
Fire dampers don't fail gradually. They pass or they don't — and the only way to know is to trigger the fusible link, watch the blade drop, and confirm the duct is sealed. BS 9999 mandates inspection frequencies that most facilities teams struggle to track across a building with forty, sixty, a hundred dampers scattered through ceiling voids on six levels. The paperwork that usually accompanies this work is a clipboard with a hand-drawn grid that gets photographed and filed in a folder nobody opens until the fire officer arrives.
This template replaces the clipboard.
Fusible Link Date and WL: The Two Fields That Drive Your Inspection Schedule
The fusible link is the thermal fuse that releases the damper blade. It has a rated working life (WL) and a registration date. When the WL expires, the link must be replaced — not inspected, replaced. The Fusible Link Date field records when the current link was installed. The Fusible Link WL field records its rated service life. From these two, you know exactly when each damper's link is due for replacement, building-wide, sorted by AHU zone and level.
Most facilities teams don't know this data for more than half their dampers. They find out when the fire inspector asks.
The Boolean Checklist That Certifies a Damper
No Corrosion. Ambient Integrity Good. No Obstructions. Clean. Vertical or Horizontal orientation. Spring Assisted. Multiple Segments. Eight boolean fields that represent a visual inspection protocol. Each one is a pass/fail checkpoint, and each one maps to a specific failure mode that causes dampers to stick open during a fire.
Corrosion on the blade or frame prevents full closure — the blade jams against oxidized metal and leaves a gap. Obstructions in the duct immediately upstream redirect airflow across the damper face and can hold the blade open even after the link releases. The orientation flags (Vertical/Horizontal) matter because spring-assisted dampers behave differently in each orientation — the spring force that closes a horizontal damper reliably may be insufficient for a vertical installation where gravity is working against it.
Drop Test Result and Follow-Up
Drop Test Passed. Passed. Failed. Follow up required. The test sequence is documented in three fields. The drop test is the definitive functional test: fusible link released or manually tripped, blade observed to close fully, reset and operational status confirmed. When the blade sticks — and they do stick, especially in systems where the damper hasn't been tested since commissioning — the Failed boolean fires, Follow up required gets flagged, and the Remarks field captures whether it's a blade alignment issue, a corrosion seizure, or a blocked actuator.
Five image slots per damper. Before inspection. The fusible link close-up. The blade in open position. The blade after drop test. Any defects found. When the follow-up contractor arrives six weeks later to fix the failed damper, they open the record and see exactly what the inspector saw. The QR/Barcode field ties the physical damper to the record — scan the tag on the damper casing and the Memento entry opens instantly, no manual ID entry required.