Fire Door Inspection: 15 Defects That Fail a Door

A fire door is not a door. It is an engineered assembly of leaf, frame, hinges, seals, closer and ironmongery, tested as a complete unit, and it performs only if every part of that assembly is intact.

That is why fire door inspection is specific rather than impressionistic. A door that looks fine can fail because of a 6mm gap, a missing screw or a closer somebody adjusted.

This is a defect-level guide: what an inspector looks for and why each item matters. Our separate guide to fire doors in offices covers how often inspection should happen and who should do it.

Where the duty comes from

Article 17 of the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 requires premises, and any facilities, equipment and devices provided under the Order, to be subject to a suitable system of maintenance and maintained in an efficient state, in efficient working order and in good repair.

Fire doors are part of the provision a fire strategy relies on, so they fall squarely within that. Article 14 adds the requirement that emergency routes and exits are kept clear and that emergency doors are not locked or fastened against easy opening.

Separately, regulation 10 of the Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022 imposes specific fire door check duties in higher-risk residential buildings, a regime that is residential rather than commercial.

1. Gaps around the leaf are too large

The most common defect and the one with the clearest consequence.

The gap between the door leaf and the frame should be consistent and small, typically around 3mm along the top and sides. Larger gaps allow smoke and then fire past the assembly before the seals can act.

Check all three edges with something of known thickness rather than by eye. A gap that varies along one edge usually indicates a dropped hinge or a distorted leaf.

2. The threshold gap is excessive

The bottom edge is assessed differently from the sides, and it is frequently ignored.

A large gap under the door defeats smoke control even where the rest of the assembly is sound. Where floor finishes have been changed, carpet removed or a threshold strip lost, this gap often grows without anybody noticing.

3. Intumescent strips are missing, damaged or painted over

The component that makes the assembly work in a fire.

Intumescent strips expand under heat and seal the gap. They should be present in the leaf or frame, continuous, firmly seated in their groove, and undamaged.

Three failure modes: strips painted over during redecoration, strips lifting out of the groove, and strips cut or removed during ironmongery work. Painted strips are the most common and the easiest to miss.

4. Smoke seals are absent or ineffective

Where the door is required to restrict cold smoke, brush or fin seals should be present and in contact with the frame along their length.

Missing sections, flattened brushes and seals worn away near the closing edge are all defects. These matter in the early minutes of a fire, which is exactly when people are escaping.

5. Hinges are the wrong type, loose or incomplete

Fire doors carry weight and need the right hinges, correctly fitted.

Look for the full complement of hinges, usually three on a standard leaf, with every screw present and tight, screws of the correct type rather than whatever was to hand, and no visible distortion.

A single missing screw is a genuine defect, not a tidiness issue. It transfers load to the remaining fixings and begins the sequence that produces defect number one.

6. The closer does not close the door fully

The most consequential mechanical failure.

Test it from several positions, including a few degrees from closed, which is where weak closers fail. The door should close fully and latch every time, without being pushed.

Common causes: a closer adjusted to make the door easier to open, a worn or leaking unit, or a closer removed entirely. The second half of that test matters most, because a door that closes to within an inch of the frame has not closed.

7. The latch does not engage

A door that closes but does not latch can be pushed open by pressure differences in a fire.

Check that the latch engages cleanly into the keep without needing the door to be pulled, and that the keep is correctly aligned and fixed.

8. The leaf is damaged, drilled or has holes

Any penetration through the leaf compromises it.

Look for holes left by removed ironmongery, cable penetrations, deep gouges, delamination at the edges, and anything screwed through the door. Letter plates and air transfer grilles should not be present unless specifically rated and fitted for the purpose.

9. Glazing or beading is damaged or non-compliant

Vision panels are a common feature on office fire doors, and a common weak point.

The glazing should be fire-rated, intact, and held by the correct beading, fixed as designed. Cracked panes, missing beads and glazing that has been replaced with ordinary glass during a repair are all defects.

10. The frame is loose or the perimeter is not sealed

The assembly includes the frame and its junction with the wall.

Check the frame is firmly fixed, undamaged, and that the gap between frame and structure is properly filled. Gaps here provide a route past the door entirely, and they appear after alterations, cabling work and fit-outs.

11. The door is wedged, tied or propped open

The most frequent finding in any office, and the only one that requires no tools to fix.

A fire door held open is a hole in a fire compartment. The causes are usually practical: a heavy door on a route people use with their hands full, poor ventilation, or deliveries in progress.

Treat repeated wedging as a design finding rather than a discipline problem. If people keep propping the same door, ask why.

12. Hold-open devices are not linked to the alarm

Where doors are legitimately held open, the mechanism matters.

Acceptable devices release the door on alarm activation or power failure. Check they are linked to the detection system, that they release during the alarm test, and that the door then closes fully and latches.

A device that holds the door and does not release is worse than a wedge, because it looks compliant.

13. Signage is missing or wrong

Fire doors generally require signage indicating that they should be kept shut, and doors held open on a device require signage reflecting that.

A door labelled "fire door keep shut" and permanently held open on an unlinked device gives two contradictory instructions, and people follow the one they can see.

14. Certification evidence cannot be found

Fire doors carry identification, often a label or plug on the top edge or hanging edge.

Absence of a label does not automatically mean a door is not fire rated, particularly in older buildings, and it does mean you cannot evidence the rating. Where the fire risk assessment relies on a door being rated, that evidence matters.

Record what you find rather than assuming either way.

15. The compartment around the door has been breached

The defect that makes all fourteen above irrelevant.

A fire door protects a compartment, and compartments are regularly breached above the ceiling line and below the floor by cabling, pipework and ductwork installed long after the building opened.

Whenever contractors work on services, the compartment line is at risk. This is why the contractor control arrangements covered elsewhere in this series matter so much to fire safety, and why inspecting doors without ever looking above a ceiling tile gives false assurance.

The 15, in short

Defect	Why it matters
Gaps too large	Smoke and fire pass before seals act
Threshold gap	Defeats smoke control
Intumescent strips	The component that seals the assembly
Smoke seals	Critical in the early escape minutes
Hinges	Load transfer leads to dropped doors
Closer	A door closed to within an inch is open
Latch	Pressure can push an unlatched door
Leaf damage	Any penetration compromises it
Glazing	Fire-rated glass, correct beading
Frame and perimeter	A route past the door entirely
Wedged open	A hole in the compartment
Hold-open devices	Must release on alarm
Signage	Contradictory instructions get ignored
Certification	You cannot evidence what you cannot find
Compartment breach	Makes the other fourteen irrelevant

Items six and eleven account for most real-world failures, and item fifteen is the one that turns a good door survey into a misleading one.

Who should inspect, and how to record it

The Order does not prescribe a qualification, and competence is judged on the usual basis: training, knowledge, experience and the ability to apply them.

In practice a layered approach works. Somebody on site carries out routine visual checks for the obvious items, principally wedging, damage and closers. A competent inspector carries out periodic detailed inspection covering the full list. And any door found defective is recorded, reported and fixed on a timescale reflecting its importance.

Record each door individually with a location reference, the date, what was found and what was done. A survey reporting "doors inspected, generally satisfactory" is not a record anybody can act on or evidence later.

Periodic health and safety audits frequently find door surveys with no defect list and no closed actions, which is the same failure pattern that affects every other statutory check.

For international groups

Two considerations.

Door certification and testing standards are national, so ratings, labelling and inspection expectations differ between countries. A group specification written to a British standard will not transfer directly.

Inspection duties are prescribed in some jurisdictions and left to the duty holder in others. Several countries covered in this series require fire documentation and exercises in forms with no British equivalent, including evacuation plans with graphical parts and annual fire audits by separately approved auditors.

Holding door registers, inspection dates and open defects across every site in one register is where health and safety consultants and software are worth more together than either alone.

Where Arinite fits

Arinite inspects doors as part of understanding whether a building's fire strategy actually works, which includes looking above the ceiling line rather than only at the door. We support 1,500+ businesses across 50+ countries and protect 100,000+ employees, with 95%+ client retention over 15+ years.

Our health and safety consultants work extensively with legal, insurance, education and IT and software organisations, and our fire risk assessment work covers the compartmentation that doors form part of.

Where premises span several countries, our global health and safety consultants establish what each jurisdiction requires, and our international health and safety consultants keep that current.

If a fire door in your building is propped open today, a free gap analysis is the right place to start.