Fire door hinges are loose, worn or causing the door to drop in London

You push the door and it drags on the carpet. Or it's swung shut on its own and caught the frame at an angle instead of closing flush. Maybe you've noticed the gap at the top's gone wide on one side and tight on the other - that's a classic sign the door's dropped on its hinges.

It's one of the most common calls we get across London, from Victorian conversions in the east to post-war council blocks in the south east. The door doesn't look broken. It just doesn't sit right any more, and it definitely doesn't close the way it used to.

What it might mean

Most of the time, it's the hinge screws - they've worked loose under the weight of the door over months or years, and the leaf has started to sag. That's the most likely cause, and often the simplest to put right.

It could also be that the hinges themselves are worn out, undersized for the door, or were never fire-rated to begin with - we see that a lot on older doors where replacement hinges have gone in over the years without anyone checking the spec. Sometimes the timber around the hinge position has degraded, especially in older frames where moisture's got in behind the packing. And occasionally the door's been overloaded - extra locks, panic bars, letterboxes added over time - putting strain on hinges that were never sized for it.

We won't tell you which one it is without looking. But we can tell you that a dropped door doesn't fix itself, and it doesn't stay the same either. It gets worse.

How urgent is it?

If the door still closes properly, latches on the first go, and the gaps look roughly even, you've likely got a bit of time - though it's still worth getting it looked at before it deteriorates further.

If it's not closing on its own, if it's catching the frame hard enough that you have to shove it, or if the gaps are visibly uneven top to bottom, that's same-day territory. A fire door that won't self-close and latch isn't doing its job. That's not a comfort issue - that's the door failing at the one thing it's there for.

What you can safely check

Have a look at the hinges - are any screws missing, sitting proud, or turning freely in the hole? That tells you a lot. Don't keep lifting, forcing or wedging the door to get it to shut, because that just puts more strain on hinges that are already struggling and can make the damage worse.

And don't be tempted to swap in whatever hinges you've got in the shed. Fire doors need fire-rated hinges - the wrong hardware is one of the most common things that trips up an inspection, and it's an easy mistake to make with good intentions.

What we check

When we come out, we're not just tightening screws. We check the hinge grade, how many are fitted, and whether there's evidence they're actually fire-rated - a lot of doors get "fixed" over the years with whatever was in the toolbox, and that's exactly what a proper fire door inspection is designed to catch. We check screw retention and the condition of the timber or frame around each hinge, look at the hinge pads, and measure the gaps around the door before we touch anything.

Once any work's done, we test the self-closing action and check it's latching properly - because a door that closes but doesn't latch is still a door that's failed.

How it's fixed

Where the screws have simply worked loose, that's often a straightforward fixing repair. Where the hinges are worn, wrong-spec or not fire-rated, they get replaced with hinges that match what the doorset's test evidence calls for. If the leaf's dropped and the gaps have gone out, the door gets realigned and reset so it sits correctly in the frame again.

This is standard fire door repairs work, and it's bread-and-butter across London's older estate stock - post-war council blocks especially, where original timber FD30 doors are well past their original fixings and closers. Once the work's done, we can update the inspection record to reflect what's been carried out, so there's a paper trail if the next check comes asking.

Call today if the door won't close on its own, if it's catching hard enough to need forcing, or if you can see daylight unevenly around the frame. That's not a door doing its job any more, and it's not one to leave until next week.