Schools, care homes and offices
Heavy use, glass panels, notice boards and a record an auditor will accept.
Get a priceSchools, care homes and offices have one thing in common. People open the doors all day. A school corridor door can swing hundreds of times before lunch, a care home door is used by residents, carers, trolleys and wheelchairs, and an office stair door is held open by whoever's carrying the coffees. Heavy use wears every part of a door, and faster than most people expect.
Schools
We try to work in the holidays. The building's empty, nobody has to be moved and every classroom door can be opened and closed freely. The faults are fairly predictable: hinge screws loosened by years of slamming, closers set too weak to latch the door, notice boards and laminated signs pinned straight onto the leaf, and glass panels with the wrong beading or none.
Across two secondary schools and an almshouse in Luton, we dealt with 147 doors. Of those, 140 were repaired on site rather than replaced.
Care homes
Fire doors in a care home protect people who cannot easily move quickly. That is why bedroom doors and corridor doors get special attention.
We work around the residents. We tell the manager which wing we are doing, we do not go into a room without being let in, and we keep corridors clear.
Many care homes use hold-open devices so doors do not become a barrier for residents. These must release when the alarm sounds. We check they do, and we say so if the door is being held with something else.
We have inspected 16 doors across three homecare properties in Hemel Hempstead and Kings Langley.
Offices
Offices tend to be quieter, but the doors are not always better looked after. The usual faults are propped stair doors, cable runs drilled through the door leaf, glazing replaced after a break with plain glass, and signage missing after a refit.
Landlords of multi-tenant buildings should be aware that the common stair is theirs, while a door into a tenant's suite may be the tenant's duty. We note which is which when we can.
Records
An auditor, an insurer or the fire service may ask to see that doors are checked regularly. A dated report with photos answers that. A shelf of old reports on its own does not, so we suggest a yearly inspection and quick checks by your own staff in between.
Questions we get asked
Can you work out of hours?
Yes. Evenings and weekends are possible for offices. Schools are usually best in the holidays.
Do you check fire exit doors?
We check fire doors. A fire exit door is a different thing. If you want exits covered too, say so when you ask for a price.
Send us the postcode and a rough door count and we will come back with a price the same day.
Get a price