Fire door inspection in Northolt
Housing blocks, schools and buildings where people sleep.
Get a priceNortholt has an airfield, a Central line station and a lot of low-rise housing.
That shapes what we are asked to look at here.
Housing blocks
Low-rise blocks with a shared stair or a deck. Often the same design repeated across a whole estate, so a fault in one is likely to be in all of them.
Here is a typical one. A manager replaces a flat entrance door that was damaged, and the new door goes on a frame that is a slightly different size. The gaps are wrong all the way round. Or a whole run of doors were fitted with a closer that is too weak for the door.
If you manage a group of similar blocks, it makes sense to inspect all the doors in one block first, then plan around what we find. We can send the same report layout for each block so you can compare them.
Where people sleep
Sheltered housing, care homes and supported living all have a feature in common. People are in bed, and some of them cannot get out quickly.
In buildings like that the bedroom doors do most of the work. Each room is a compartment. If a fire starts in one, the door has to hold it long enough for staff to move residents.
That means the closer on a bedroom door has to be light enough for a resident to open and strong enough to shut the door. Those two things pull against each other, and staff are tempted to fix the problem by taking the closer off. We look for exactly that.
Doors that are held open with a hold-open device need to be linked to the alarm. A wedge is not a hold-open device. Our short answer on wedged doors explains the options.
Schools
There are several schools in the area, and most need doors checked in the holidays. Our page for schools and halls has the details. We work out of hours.
The report
Each door is listed against the number on the plan. For a building with sleeping rooms we group the report by floor, so that the first thing the manager sees is a count of how many bedroom doors failed.
A report is only any use if you can act on it. Ours says what is wrong, how urgent it is, and what we would do.
Who checks the work
The London Fire Brigade enforces fire safety in the area. Care providers also answer to the Care Quality Commission, which may ask about fire safety records.
Repairs
We inspect. Our own crew repairs, and we say at pricing whether we can take on the work. For a care home the repair work often has to be done in small pieces, room by room, to keep residents safe in the meantime.
From Luton
Northolt is a drive from Luton for us. We have no office here.
Questions we get asked
Our care home bedroom doors have no closers. Is that a problem?
Probably, yes. Tell us how many and we will tell you what we would do.
Can you inspect while residents are in their rooms?
We can work around them. Tell us the times that are best for staff and for residents.
Send the postcode and a rough number of doors. We will come back with a price the same day.
Get a price