Fire door installers
Employed carpenters for main contractors, landlords and facilities managers, installing certified doorsets to programme with the paperwork already in place.
Fire doors · Lincolnshire, Cambridgeshire, Norfolk
Fire door installation and replacement
Fire door installation and replacement across Lincolnshire, Cambridgeshire and Norfolk, for main contractors, local authorities, landlords and building managers. Certified doorsets fitted as complete tested assemblies, by employed carpenters, with the gaps set and recorded door by door. Send us the door schedule and we will price it.
The part most people get wrong
A correctly specified fire door still fails if it is fitted badly.
A fire door is not a product you hang. It is an assembly that was tested as a whole: leaf, frame, intumescent and smoke seals, hinges, latch, closer, glazing and beads, and any letterplate or air transfer grille. Change one of those components for something outside the scope of the test evidence, or fit it with the wrong gaps, and the certification no longer describes the door in front of you.
That is why the same door can pass in a laboratory and fail on site. The three failures we see most often when we walk a building are all installation issues rather than product issues: gaps at the head and stiles opened up well beyond the nominal 3mm that BS 8214 gives, frames packed out with ordinary expanding foam instead of a fire-rated packing, and self-closing devices either removed or adjusted so far back that the door no longer closes fully onto the latch from any angle of opening.
After that comes the slow damage that occupied buildings do to doors over the years: intumescent strips painted over or dug out, cold smoke seals torn, hinges reduced from three to two, holes cored through the leaf for data cables, vision panels reglazed in ordinary glass, and doors held open on wedges because the closer is too heavy.
None of that is exotic. It is all visible to a carpenter who has been shown what to look for, and all of it is fixable. What it needs is somebody who treats the door as an assembly rather than a joinery item.
What we install and to what
- Ratings
- FD30, FD30S, FD60 and FD60S doorsets, to the rating on the client's door schedule or fire strategy
- Reference
- BS 8214, code of practice for timber-based fire door assemblies, plus the door manufacturer's own installation instructions
- Gaps
- Nominal 3mm at head and stiles, threshold gap set by the door's test evidence
- Seals
- Intumescent strips to seal the gap under heat, cold smoke seals where the specification calls for an S rating
- Ironmongery
- Three hinges as standard, latch, closer and any hold-open device fitted within the scope of the door's certification
- Frames
- Fixed back to structure and packed with fire-rated packing, not ordinary expanding foam
- Evidence
- Certification label or plug recorded, door by door, with the schedule handed over at the end
The rules people are actually working to
Where fire door duties come from
This is a plain summary, not legal advice, and it is not a substitute for a fire risk assessment. If you are the responsible person for a building, take advice from a competent fire risk assessor.
The Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022
These came into force in January 2023 and sit under the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005. They put specific, dated duties on the responsible person for a building rather than leaving everything to a general duty to assess risk.
Regulation 10 is the one that drives most of the work we get asked to quote. In buildings with storeys over 11 metres in height, the responsible person must carry out checks of all fire doors in the common parts at least every three months, and must make best endeavours to check flat entrance doors at least every twelve months. In any building above two storeys with common parts, residents have to be given information about fire doors: keep them shut, do not tamper with the self-closing device, report a fault.
Those duties sit with the responsible person. What we do is the physical part: the inspection, the schedule of defects, and the remedial or replacement work that comes out of it.
BS 8214, Approved Document B and Regulation 38
BS 8214 is the British Standard code of practice for timber-based fire door assemblies. It is the document that covers selection, installation and maintenance, and it is where the familiar guidance on gaps, packing, hinge numbers and seal fitting comes from. Where the manufacturer's own installation instructions are more specific, those take precedence, because it is the manufacturer's test evidence the door is certified against.
Approved Document B is the statutory guidance for fire safety in the Building Regulations, and it is where the required rating for a given door in a given position comes from. Regulation 38 requires fire safety information to be handed to the responsible person at completion, which in practice means the door schedule, the certification details and the installation records need to exist and be legible.
For higher-risk residential buildings the Building Safety Act 2022 layers further duties on top. Those are the client's to discharge. We supply the records that let them do it.
Third-party certification
Why the certification label on the top edge matters
A door leaf on its own proves very little. Third-party certification schemes exist because a manufacturer's own claim is not independently checked, and a certificated doorset carries a label or a colour-coded plug, usually on the top edge of the leaf, that ties the door back to a specific test and a specific set of permitted components and installation conditions.
Read the certification and it tells you what you are allowed to do: which hinges, how many, what latch, which closer, what glazing and bead detail, what packing material, what maximum gaps, and whether the door can be cut down at all and by how much. Anything outside that is an unevidenced door, whatever the label says.
Two practical consequences follow. The first is that you cannot buy the leaf from one place, the frame from another, the ironmongery from a third and expect a certified assembly. The second is that trimming a door to fit an out-of-square opening is not automatically allowed, and where an opening is badly out of square the right answer is usually a new frame rather than a heavily trimmed leaf.
Where a client wants that evidence chain to be watertight, we ask for certificated doorsets, fit strictly to the manufacturer's instructions, keep the labels intact and legible, and hand over a schedule that records what went where. That record is what makes the doors defensible later.
To be clear about our scope: AJB Group is a carpentry contractor. We are not a fire risk assessor and we do not issue fire risk assessments or fire strategies. We install, replace, repair and report on fire door assemblies, working to the rating and specification the building's designer or fire risk assessor has set.
Fire door services
Three ways we get asked to help
Most enquiries are one of these three. All of them are carried out by our own employed carpenters, working on our own accreditations.
Fire door surveys
Door by door condition reports on gaps, seals, hinges, closers, glazing and certification evidence, with a costed schedule of what needs putting right.
Commercial fire door replacement
Whole-building replacement programmes in occupied premises, phased floor by floor so nothing is left as an unprotected opening overnight.
Work we have actually done
Councils, conversions and a training centre
Three jobs give a fair picture of the range.
17-19 High Street, Grantham. A disused town centre building turned into nine apartments for Probus Construction, a commercial to residential conversion where we took the full carpentry package. That included 72 internal fire doors and frames, alongside new sash windows, two double winder staircases, stud partitions, nine kitchens and a pharmacy fit-out. Seventy-two doors in one building is a schedule, not a day's work, and it is run as one.
North Norfolk District Council. A full rip out of failed fire doors, upgraded and refitted to regulations and fire safety standards by our trim carpenters, in a building that stayed in use throughout.
A fire safety test centre in Peterborough. Our joiners built the centre itself for a safety contractor. The rooms are used to demonstrate materials and fire door safety mechanisms to trainee fitters from across the construction industry. It is an unusual credential and a useful one: we have built the rooms other people learn fire door detailing in.
For main contractors and developers
Send the door schedule and the drawings and we will price supply and fit, or fit only where the doorsets are already procured. We work on our own CHAS accreditation and SMSTS certification, we produce RAMS before we start, and we have fourteen full-time carpenters, which means a large schedule can be split across floors or blocks and run in parallel rather than in sequence.
Fire doors rarely arrive in isolation. On most of our contract work they sit inside a wider carpentry package, so the same team is already on site doing first fix, second fix, staircases and kitchens. That removes one interface from your programme and one set of access arrangements from your site diary.
We hand over the door schedule marked up with what was fitted where, so the information you need for Regulation 38 exists rather than having to be reconstructed afterwards.
For landlords, managing agents and building managers
If you have had an inspection report land on your desk with a list of fire door defects on it, the useful next step is a costed schedule against each defect: what can be repaired in place, what needs a new leaf, what needs a new frame, and what is fine as it is. That is what our fire door survey produces.
From there the work can be phased so a building stays occupied and usable. Doors come out and go back the same day, corridors stay passable, and the areas we are working in are cleared down at the end of each shift. Residents get told what is happening and when.
One point of contact throughout, a written estimate before anything starts, and no charge for coming out to look.
Common questions
Fire doors, answered plainly
What is the difference between an FD30 and an FD60 fire door?
The number is the number of minutes of fire resistance the complete assembly achieved in a standard furnace test, so FD30 is 30 minutes and FD60 is 60 minutes. An S suffix, as in FD30S, means the doorset also has cold smoke seals and has been tested for smoke leakage. Which rating you need is set by the fire strategy or the Building Regulations designer for that building, not by the carpenter. Send us the door schedule and we will price and fit to it.
Does a fire door have to be fitted by a certified installer?
There is no single legal requirement for a certified installer in every situation, but a fire door only performs as tested if it is installed within the scope of its certification, and many specifications and insurers now ask for third-party certificated installation. Whoever fits it, the installation should follow the manufacturer's instructions and BS 8214, and the evidence should be recorded door by door. AJB Group is CHAS accredited and SMSTS certified and installs to the door manufacturer's instructions and the project specification.
How often do fire doors have to be checked?
Under the Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022, in buildings with storeys over 11 metres in height the responsible person must carry out checks of fire doors in the common parts at least quarterly and, on a best endeavours basis, check flat entrance doors at least annually. In buildings above two storeys with common parts, residents must also be given information about fire doors. Those duties sit with the responsible person. We carry out the physical inspection and the remedial work, we do not take on the responsible person duty.
What gap should there be around a fire door?
BS 8214 gives a nominal 3mm gap at the head and along both stiles, typically with a tolerance of about 1mm either side, though the door's own test evidence takes precedence. The gap at the threshold is set by the certification and is usually much tighter where a cold smoke seal is required. Gaps that are too wide let fire and smoke past before the intumescent seal can close them. Gaps that are too tight bind and stop the door closing onto the latch, which is just as much of a failure.
Can you replace fire doors in an occupied building?
Yes, and most of the replacement work we do is in buildings that stay occupied. It is programmed door by door, with temporary protection, dust control, and each opening made good the same day rather than left open overnight. That is how we ran the full rip out and replacement of failed fire doors for North Norfolk District Council.
Do you do fire risk assessments?
No. AJB Group is a carpentry contractor, not a fire risk assessor. We survey, install, replace and repair fire door assemblies and report on their condition. A fire risk assessment for the building is a separate piece of work that must be carried out by a competent fire risk assessor, and our reports do not replace one.
Got a door schedule, or an inspection report?
Send it over and we will price the work. Or we will come out and walk the building with you first, free.