Fire Door Repair or Replace? A Practical Decision Guide

Three quarters of fire doors inspected in England in 2019 failed at least one criterion, according to Fire Door Inspection Scheme audit data. The expensive mistake is assuming a failed door means a new door. Usually it does not.

When repair is the right answer

Most inspection failures are component-level, and components can be brought back to certified performance in place:

• Oversized gaps: re-hanging, hinge adjustment or lipping brings gaps back to around 3mm
• Worn or painted seals: intumescent and smoke seals are replaceable in the same grooves
• Tired closers: replaced or adjusted so the door self-closes and latches from any angle
• Wrong hardware: non-rated hinges, latches, letterplates and grilles swapped for tested equivalents
• Missing signage: supplied and fitted in minutes

Repairs like these typically cost a small fraction of a new doorset, which matters at portfolio scale where hundreds of doors carry the same few defects.

When replacement is unavoidable

• Core damage: holes, deep gouges or delamination through the leaf cannot be patched to a rating
• No traceable certification: if a door’s rating cannot be evidenced or assessed, remediation cannot make it compliant
• Unrated or wrecked frames: the doorset is the tested unit, and a failed frame fails the set
• Cumulative modification: doors trimmed, drilled and patched over decades eventually have nothing left to certify

How to decide, door by door

The decision needs evidence, not instinct: each door assessed against its certification, measured, photographed and classified as remediate or replace with a cost against each. That is exactly what a fire door survey produces. From there, remedial works clear the fixable defects and replacement doorsets go only where they are genuinely needed, all closed out with certification.

A warning about both extremes

Be wary of contractors whose answer is always replacement, and equally of anyone promising to “certify” a door with no traceable rating by fitting new seals. The honest position sits in the middle: repair what can be evidenced, replace what cannot, and document everything.