Fire doors in houses split into flats
Old houses, shared stairs, and doors that were never quite what somebody said they were.
Get a priceNobody built these houses to be flats.
Somebody divided them up, in the seventies or the eighties or last year, and the staircase that used to serve one family now serves three or four households. The fire door at the top of each flight is what makes that arrangement safe.
If the conversion was done cheaply, that door may be a normal door with a coat of paint.
How to tell who is responsible
If you own the freehold, you are probably the responsible person for the common parts. That covers the hall, the stairs and the door from each flat onto them.
If the leaseholders bought the freehold together and run a small company, the company has that duty. It often falls on one director who happens to be the keenest.
Who pays for a flat entrance door is another question, and the lease answers it. Read yours before anybody orders a door.
Things that go wrong in conversions
The glazed fanlight above a flat door. It looks lovely and it is usually plain glass.
Beautiful panelled doors kept to please the conservation officer. A panelled door is thin at the panels and panels void any rating. Our advice is a plain certified doorset.
A door hung in a frame made from whatever was lying around, with a 10mm gap on the hanging side and a strip of wood pinned on to hide it.
Meters in a cupboard under the stairs, behind a hollow door, right on the escape route.
Letterboxes with no fire rating, or the flap taken off.
Section 257
Some converted buildings count as an HMO in their own right, under section 257 of the Housing Act 2004. That can happen where the conversion did not meet the 1991 Building Regulations and fewer than two thirds of the flats are owner occupied.
If that might be you, ask the council. It changes what you are expected to do and who can inspect you.
Being sensible about old houses
Parts of Surbiton and Kingston are conservation areas, and a few buildings are listed. If yours is listed, speak to the council before changing a door.
Plenty of problems can be solved at the door itself without touching the look of the hallway. Sometimes the answer really is a new doorset. We will say which it is and why.
How the visit works
Two or three flats and a hallway is usually a short visit. Someone needs to let us into each flat or be there when we come to the door.
You get one report for the whole building, so every leaseholder can see the same information. That tends to end the arguments about whose door is whose.
A job like this
We repaired 34 fire doors in a block of flats in Luton. Lots of front doors, lots of different people to deal with, and one list of faults everyone could work from.
Questions we get asked
Do I need a survey if nothing has gone wrong?
You need to know the doors work. If nobody has looked in years, then somebody should.
Can you look at just the shared parts?
Yes, though the flat entrance doors open onto the escape route and they are the ones that usually fail.
Send us the postcode and a rough door count. You will have a price the same day.
Get a price