Fire doors in student lets and HMOs
Kitchen doors, bedroom doors and the one staircase everybody relies on.
Get a priceSeptember is hard on a fire door.
New tenants arrive with a van and a bed frame. Somebody takes the closer off the kitchen door because it bangs. By October there is a hook on the back of one bedroom door and a dent in the bottom of another where a suitcase hit it.
Kingston has a lot of this. Kingston University has sites at Penrhyn Road, Kingston Hill and Knights Park, and the terraces around them fill up with sharers every year.
The doors that matter most in a shared house
The kitchen door, first. Cooking is the biggest single cause of accidental fires at home, so that door is doing the most work and it is the one most likely to be wedged open.
Bedroom doors onto the staircase come next. When a tenant is asleep behind one, the door is what keeps the stair usable for everybody else.
Then anything to a meter cupboard, boiler space or basement off the escape route.
What goes wrong in student houses
Closers disconnected, or wound right back so they barely move.
Hasps and padlocks screwed through a door by a tenant who wanted privacy.
Keyed locks that need a key on the inside. If you have to find a key to get out of your bedroom at three in the morning, that is a problem and it goes in the report.
Intumescent strip missing where a door was planed to stop it sticking.
Licences
A property rented to five or more people from two or more households needs a mandatory HMO licence in England. Some councils license smaller HMOs as well, under additional licensing.
Licence conditions often mention fire doors, so read yours. If you are unsure what applies to your street, the housing team at the Royal Borough of Kingston can tell you.
A dated report with a photo of each door is a useful thing to have in the file when a council officer visits.
When to book it
The summer gap is the easy time. Rooms are empty, nobody needs to be warned, and any repairs can be done before the next lot move in.
During term we can still do it. We give tenants notice through you and work round lectures as well as we can.
What it does not cover
A door inspection is a separate job from the fire risk assessment an HMO needs. We can look at every door in the house and that still would not cover the alarm, the escape route or the emergency lighting.
Something similar we have done
We inspected 16 fire doors across homecare properties in Hemel Hempstead and Kings Langley. People living in ordinary houses, with staff who needed a clear written answer door by door.
Questions we get asked
Can I just swap the bedroom doors myself?
You can buy doors, but a fire door is only as good as its frame, hinges, seals and how it was hung. A plain certified doorset, fitted properly, is what we would advise. Panelled doors void the rating.
Do I have to fit closers to bedroom doors?
It depends on the house and what your fire risk assessment says. Ask whoever wrote it, or we can tell you what we see commonly asked for.
Send us the postcode and a rough door count. You will have a price the same day.
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