Fire door inspection in Richmond
Georgian buildings, mansion blocks and small hotels where looks matter a lot.
Get a priceAlmost nobody in Richmond wants a fire door that looks like a fire door.
They want the original six-panel door with its old brass knob. Often the conservation officer wants that too. So you get a very attractive doorway in a very old building, and it is doing almost nothing to stop a fire.
This is the honest problem with Richmond. The building is worth protecting, and so are the people in it.
What a panelled door does
Panels are thin. That is how they are made. The timber there may be a fraction of the thickness of the door around it, and fire goes through the thin part first.
Any fire rating is void on a panelled door. We will not tell you otherwise, and neither should anybody else.
Our advice is a plain certified doorset where a fire door is needed. In a listed building, you have to speak to Richmond Council before changing anything, because altering a listed building without consent is an offence.
Who has the final word
The fire risk assessment says which doors need to be fire doors. Not every door in a building does.
A door you were dreading can turn out to be a cupboard, or to have another protected route beside it. The one nobody mentions is often the door between the basement and the only stair.
Get the assessment read properly. That is a separate job from what we do, and it comes first.
Mansion blocks
Richmond has some handsome older mansion blocks with big landings and heavy doors. They are often run by a residents' company with volunteers on the board.
Look at the doors from the landing side. Check for a closer. A lot of these doors never had one. Check the letterbox, which may be an original opening with nothing behind it. Check the frame where it meets old plaster.
If the building tops 11 metres, you have quarterly and yearly checks to do by law. Many will be close to that line.
Small hotels and guest rooms
Guests do not know the building and they are asleep. It is one of the higher-risk situations a door can be in.
We surveyed 129 fire doors at a hotel in Reading. Bedroom corridors tend to go the same way in any hotel, with closers wearing out and doors being held open for cleaning trolleys.
Spot the ones that do not latch. A door that closes but does not latch can be pushed open by the pressure of a fire.
The Hill and the riverside
Richmond Hill, the Green, the riverside. Beautiful places to work and hopeless for parking. A van on the Green is not going to happen.
Tell us about access when you get in touch. Which door can we come in by, where can we unload a bag of tools, and who has the keys? It all goes more smoothly if we know.
Local details
Richmond is in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames, which also handles planning and listed building consent. London Fire Brigade enforces fire safety. Kew, East Sheen and Ham are in the same borough.
We travel in from Luton. We do not have an office here. We visit by appointment.
Questions we get asked
Can you upgrade our panelled doors?
Panels void the rating, so that is not something we would offer. A plain certified doorset is the honest answer.
Do all doors in an old house need to be fire doors?
No. Your fire risk assessment will say which ones do. We check those.
Send us the postcode and a rough door count. You will have a price the same day.
Get a price