There is no dollar figure in this article, because a quote for one stairwell door and a quote for a hundred doors across a mid-rise are different jobs. What the two have in common is the same short list of things that move the price, and once you know them you can read any quote and see what it covers.
What moves the price
- How many fire doors there are. Inspections are usually priced per door, or per visit with a door count behind it. Most buildings have more rated doors than the manager expects: every stairwell, every corridor door into a unit or a tenant space, mechanical and electrical rooms, and the doors in rated walls between parts of a building. Counting them before you ask for quotes is the single most useful thing you can do.
- How easy the doors are to reach. Doors in common corridors are quick. Doors inside occupied units, locked tenant suites or rooms that need an escort take longer, and a building where the inspector has to wait for keys pays for the waiting.
- The report. Each door gets a record: where it is, its rating as read from the label, each item checked and whether it passed. A building that wants door numbers, photographs of each deficiency, or tags on the frames is asking for more time per door, and the quote should say whether those are included.
- Other doors on the same visit. Smoke doors and doors with panic hardware are often checked on the same walk. That is efficient, but it is more work per door, and it should appear as its own line.
- Timing. Inspections at night or on weekends, to stay out of the way of tenants or customers, usually cost more than a weekday visit.
The inspection is not the repair
An inspection finds deficiencies; it does not fix them. Most failed items are small: a closer to adjust or replace, a latch that does not catch, a gap at the bottom, a hole to fill with the right fastener, a hold-open that has to come off. Those are priced as repairs, door by door, after the report. Be wary of a low inspection price that comes bundled with a promise to fix whatever is found for a figure nobody has written down yet.
Who does the inspection
NFPA 80 asks for the inspection once a year, done by someone with knowledge of how fire door assemblies and their hardware work, and for a written record to be kept for the authority having jurisdiction. Some fire marshals or insurers ask for more, such as a particular certification for the person signing the report. Ask your fire marshal or insurer what they expect before you collect quotes, so every quote is for the same thing.
Re-inspection
After the repairs, the doors that failed are checked again and the report is updated so the record shows each door passing. Ask whether that second look is included in the inspection price or charged separately, and whether it covers only the repaired items or the whole door.
How to keep it down
Give the inspector a door list and a floor plan if you have one, arrange access to every door on the same day, and fix the obvious things first: take the wedges out, take the hooks off, and get the doors that are propped open closed. A building that does the same inspection every year, with the same door numbers in the report, also makes each year's visit quicker than the first.
We count the doors with you, check each one, and give you a written report door by door, with any repairs priced separately in a free written estimate. The visit is same-day when the schedule allows.