Fire Door Inspection & Certification

Monthly, and properly once a year. The Ontario Fire Code requires doors in fire separations to be inspected monthly and kept in working order, with any deficiency corrected. NFPA 80, the fire door standard, adds a full inspection and operational test of every assembly at least once a year, documented and kept for the fire inspector — it sets out the checks and what counts as a failure. Buildings with a fire safety plan usually have the requirement written into it as well.

Someone with demonstrated knowledge and understanding of the assemblies being inspected — that is the wording the standard uses, and it is a competency requirement rather than a single licence. In practice, inspections are done by door contractors and by inspectors holding a recognised fire door inspection certification. What matters to a building owner is that the inspector knows what a listing requires and can tell you which findings are code deficiencies and which are maintenance.

Labels on the door and frame and whether they are legible, clearances at the head, jambs and sill, whether the door closes from any position and latches positively, the closer and any hold-open device, hinges and fasteners, glazing and lite kits, gasketing and seals, the condition of the leaf and frame, and any field modification such as a drilled hole or an added kick plate. Rolling assemblies get a drop test rather than a visual check.

Doors held open with wedges, hooks or extinguishers; closers removed or disconnected; latches that do not throw because the frame has moved; missing or painted-over labels; gaps outside the permitted clearances; and holes cut in a labelled leaf for a new lock or card reader. The pattern is consistent — most failures come from someone adapting the door to daily life rather than from the door wearing out.

Yes, and it is a good part of this work. Send us the list. We separate it into items that can be corrected within the listing — closers, latches, hinges, clearances, gasketing, frame repairs — and the doors where a field modification means the assembly cannot be certified again and has to be replaced. Then we quote the work, do it, and re-check the openings so the file can be closed out.

Yes, and by drop test. A rolling fire shutter or fire curtain is a fire door assembly, so the annual requirement applies — but a visual inspection proves nothing about a rolling assembly. It has to be released and allowed to close under its own power, then inspected and reset. It is the check most often skipped, and the one that finds curtains painted to their guides.

A written report, door by door: location, rating where a label is present, the checks performed, the deficiencies found and photographs of them, with a clear summary of what was corrected on the visit and what remains. It is formatted to be handed to a fire inspector or dropped into a building's fire safety plan, and for portfolios we keep the format identical across buildings so year-on-year comparison is possible.

A single visit for most buildings — a condo tower's stairs and service rooms typically take a few hours, a hospital or a school with hundreds of openings takes a day or more and is often phased by department. Booking is usually within a week or two, and simple deficiencies are corrected on the same visit where we can. Doors that need to be ordered follow the usual 4–6 weeks to produce and 1–2 weeks to schedule and install.