Fire door inspection in Caversham
Big houses cut into flats, and the doors that went in when they were.
Get a priceCaversham sits on the north side of the Thames and climbs uphill from the river.
A lot of the housing on those slopes is older and bigger than the estates further out. Large houses with a tall front door, a wide hall and a stair that goes round once or twice.
Where a house like that has been split into flats, the doors are where we start looking.
The door that used to be a bedroom door
In a converted house the flat entrance door is often an ordinary internal door that somebody hung in the doorway of what was a bedroom. Panelled, painted several times, a lock added later.
It might be thirty minutes of fire resistance on paper. In practice, a thin timber panel is not a fire door, and neither is one with a hole where a spyhole went in.
We find the label or plug if there is one. If not, we write down what the door is made of and why that matters.
The hall and stair
In a house of three or four flats the stair and the hall are the shared escape route. The doors opening off it need to hold smoke back long enough for people on the upper floors to get down.
That means the door to every flat, the door to any cupboard under the stair, and the door to the cellar if there is one.
Cellar doors are the ones people forget. They are often old plank doors with a bolt on the outside, hung at the bottom of the stairs.
Who is responsible
For common parts of a block or converted house, the duty falls on the person in control of them. That is usually the freeholder, or the residents' company if they own it.
Since the Fire Safety Act 2021, that duty reaches flat entrance doors as well, which matters in a house where each flat has its own leaseholder.
Caversham is in the borough of Reading, and Royal Berkshire Fire and Rescue Service is the fire authority.
If the building is under 11 metres, there is no timetable of checks in the 2022 regulations. Most converted houses are under that height. The doors still need to work.
What an inspection looks like in a house like this
We walk up from the front door. Each flat door and each shared-area door is given a reference.
We check the gaps all round, the hinges and the screws, the seals, the closer and the glass if there is any. Letterboxes are checked too, because a plain slot cut through a door is a weak point.
A small house of three or four flats is normally a morning. Most of that time is spent waiting for people to open their doors.
If a leaseholder is out, we note it and carry on. You get a list at the end of what we could not reach.
Getting across the river
We come from Luton, and the journey takes a bit over an hour on a clear run. We plan the day so we are not crossing the Thames more than we need to.
If we have several jobs in Reading, we put them on one day where we can.
Next steps
Send us the postcode and the number of flats. Photos of the front door and the hall help.
We will come back with a price the same day.
Questions we get asked
Do I need to check every flat door?
If you are the responsible person for the building, you should try to. Our report records which doors we reached and which we did not.
Will the inspection tell me to replace doors?
Only where a door cannot be repaired. We say so and give the reason.
Send us the postcode and a rough door count and we will come back with a price the same day.
Get a price