Doors and windows are weaker points in a home, where fire may make its entry into a home. Once home boundaries are breached, full combustion is a matter of minutes.
So, clearly, door mats, present in zone 0, the 0-5 ft zone around the house where no combustible materials should be around, are a problem. Coir, which is coconut fiber, ignites very easily and burns for a while. Rubber is a bit harder to ignite, but burns dangerously hot and for a long time. What are alternatives to coir or rubber mats?
There are not many true non-combustible materials. In practice, when looking at true non-combustible materials, we only can find recourse in stone or masonry of some kind and metal. In the case of door mats, metal is the one recourse we know of today.
Outside your front door, metal is exposed to water and air, and therefore subject to oxydation. The best likely metals are aluminum, galvanized steel, and stainless steel. In stainless steel, most common variations are 304 and 316 steel, with 316 steel being significantly more rust-resistant than 304 steel, but also more costly. Since rust stains, getting largely rust-free performance is important.
Scraper mats are door mats used to remove mud or snow from boots, and are surprisingly effective as all-around door mats. Several kinds can easily be found online. Below we give a short list of the best ones we found—we have not tested them yet, so we can give no hands-on direct reviews. We are not listing any steel products unless they are galvanized or stainless steel.
Galvanized door mats
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Garrett Wade galvanized door mats, small (15x23") and larger (20x32") : Garrett Wade is a small tools company that focuses on high end tools. These two door mats feature the same construction and get rave reviews. They are actually the only metal door/scraper mats where we were able to find a large number of reliable user reviews.
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Lee Valley galvanized door mat, small (15x23"): Lee Valley is another high end tool supplier. No reviews. It appears to be the same as the Garrett Wade galvanized door mat.
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Koffler Sales galvanized door mat, many sizes available: Koffler Sales is a floor and wall products specialist. There are many reviews for this door mat as well, in general good, although one complains of flimsiness.
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Mudd metal mesh door mat, by Yellow Safety | Amazon, small (17x30") and large (24x36"): looks solidly built, made in USA, only one (good review). It is described as rust-resistant but nowhere does at actually say that it is galvanized. I assume it is.
Stainless steel
We only found one provider of stainless steel scraper mats. It is an unknown Chinese brand that provides products on Amazon. While, in general, we always prefer stainless steel to galvanized, given the fact that Chinese brands on Amazon shows very unreliable performance and often provide falsified reviews, we have no way to know the quality of the product.
- 304 stainless Amazon Daomaer small doormat (18.5x23") and Daomaer big doormat (19.5x39.5"): as the reviews cannot be trusted, it is hard to know if the product is actually stainless and if the users are happy with the product. If the reviews are accurate, it could be a good choice. But, until we actually get direct feedback from local customers, we cannot recommend it.
Recommendations
Without direct experience of any of these products, we would, at this time, suggest that the Garrett Wade product is the most likely to be successful, given the reputation of the brand and the number of excellent reviews. Other products, such as the Mudd mat or the Daomaer mat, could be promising—but it is hard to say at this stage without the certainty of accurate reviews from real users. One of our members ordered the small Garrett Wade galvanized mat, and we will follow up with a quick update in a few months.