Replacing fire door seals
Painted over, pulled out or never fitted. Seals are the cheapest fix on the list.
Get a priceOpen the door and look at the edge. There should be a strip let into a groove, either in the door or the frame.
That strip does two jobs. The hard intumescent part swells in heat and closes the gap round the door. The brush or fin part stops cold smoke, which gets to people long before flames do.
Paint is the usual killer. A decorator rolls over the edge, the fin sets stiff and the strip stops doing the second job.
What we see on inspection lists
Painted seals, mostly. Rented flats get repainted between tenants and nobody mentions the door edge.
New strip stuck over old strip, so the door rubs on the frame and somebody takes a plane to it.
Strips with a section missing, often low down where a trolley or a vacuum cleaner has caught it.
Doors that never had a seal at all. Some older doors were hung before anyone fitted them and nobody went back.
What we do
The old strip is cut out and the groove is cleaned. We never fit new on top of old.
The size comes from the door itself. A label or a plug in the edge helps, and so does the manufacturer's paperwork. Where there is nothing, we match what was originally fitted and note that on the job sheet.
Lengths go in as one run wherever possible, with neat mitres at the top corners.
Then we shut the door and check it latches. New seals are stiffer than worn ones. A closer that managed last month can suddenly leave the door an inch open, so we adjust it before leaving.
Pairs of doors
Double doors have a meeting edge down the middle. That edge needs a seal too, and it is the one most often forgotten. We check it on every pair.
What it does for the report
Seal faults are quick to fix. On a corridor of identical doors we can often work through the lot in a single day.
We have done this on a block of flats in Stevenage, where the job was smoke seals, door after door.
Painted seals are usually a hint that the hinges were painted too, so we look at those on the way past.
Questions we get asked
Can the decorator paint round the seals next time?
Yes, if they mask them first or keep the brush away. Tell them before they start.
The strip has no brush. Is that a fault?
Not always. Some doors use a separate smoke seal and some never needed one. Your report should say which applies.
Send it with the postcode and we will price it one door at a time.
Get a price