Fire door inspection in Teddington
Riverside flats, shops on the High Street, and science buildings by Bushy Park.
Get a priceTeddington sits between the river and Bushy Park and it is one of the quieter parts of south west London.
That is partly why doors get forgotten. Nothing has gone wrong in years, so nobody has looked.
Fire doors do not announce that they have stopped working. A closer weakens slowly. A strip gets painted. The door still looks like a door.
Newer flats on the river
The old television studios by the lock are gone. Flats stand there now, and more have gone up along the river and around the town in recent years.
People assume new blocks are fine, but a new building is simply one where nobody has checked yet. On handover doors can have been hung by a contractor at the end of a long programme. Seals are sometimes left out, or a screw goes through where it should not.
Look at what has happened since as well. Residents move in and hang things. Removal firms lift doors off. Service contractors drill through frames for a new cable and go home.
If you manage one of these, the first full inspection is the one that matters. After that you will have something to measure against.
High Street and Broad Street
Teddington's two main shopping streets have flats and offices above many of the units.
Those upper floors are often reached by a narrow stair behind a street door. Look at where the stair meets the shop. If there is a door there, it is doing a very big job for a very small door.
Leases can be complicated in these buildings. The first thing we do is find out who controls what.
Research and offices
The National Physical Laboratory is a well known neighbour here, and it is far from the only place of work in the area. Smaller offices and light industrial units are spread around the town.
If you are in charge of a workplace, you need to take the doors seriously under the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005. Corridors and stairs are the usual places to start.
Listen to the doors for a moment. A closer that slams is a closer somebody will soon disconnect. It is cheaper to adjust it now.
Older homes
Plenty of Edwardian terraces around Teddington have been divided into flats, or let to sharers near the university and college sites a little way off in Twickenham.
Panelled doors are common in those houses. They look right and they do not count. Panels void any rating. The honest advice is a plain certified doorset and a frame that fits it.
The local bits
Teddington is in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames, so that is your council for planning and housing. Hampton Hill and Hampton Wick are close by, and Hampton Wick sits just over the bridge from Kingston.
London Fire Brigade covers all of it.
Getting booked in
We travel down from Luton. There is no base in Teddington and we will not pretend otherwise. We book your visit on a day we are around Kingston if we can.
Tell us how many doors you think you have. Round up if you are not sure. The price comes back the same day.
Questions we get asked
We are a new build under warranty. Do we still need a check?
A warranty pays for certain defects. It does not check your doors. If the doors have never been inspected since handover, it is worth having them looked at.
Do I have to be there on the day?
Someone has to let us into the building and tell us where we can go. After that we get on with it.
Send us the postcode and a rough door count. You will have a price the same day.
Get a price