newsI have several Google News alerts set, so every day I receive a few emails with lists of articles that might be interesting to the readers of iDigHardware.  There was one on today’s list about fire door inspection – not a topic you see a lot of news reports about!

You can read the article from the Cleveland Daily Banner here, but I want to share a few of the highlights.  A health care facility in Cleveland, Tennessee was recently visited by a state surveyor, who mentioned that NFPA 101-2012 requires all of the doors in the facility to be inspected (or at least, that’s what the facility personnel heard).  At an estimated cost of $18,000 to have all of their doors inspected by a 3rd party, this came as an unwelcome surprise.

The article goes on to say that a fire door inspector from Wm. S Trimble Co, came to the facility and educated their staff about their fire doors.  There were 16 fire doors to be inspected – much more palatable than ALL of the doors, and after being educated by the fire door inspector, the facility staff will be able to take better care of their fire door assemblies, and maybe even self-inspect.

Some of you may not be fans of facilities doing their own inspections, but given the multitude of fire doors out there, I have always felt that a good option would be to educate each facility’s staff about their fire doors and help them out when they have questions or some particularly tough openings.  You know what they say about teaching a man (or woman!) to fish, right?  This won’t work for every facility – there are some facilities that don’t have people on staff who are knowledgeable about fire door assemblies, but I am already seeing many facilities doing their own inspections.  I’m curious to know what other fire door inspectors think about this.

The article also sheds some light on a question that I have often been asked – how much does a fire door inspection cost?  For this facility, the cost quoted in the article was $65/opening.  Of course, this cost can vary, but if any of you have insight into the range of costs for a fire door inspection, it would be very helpful if you’d leave a comment on this post and share that information with the rest of the iDH community.

Image: Brian A Jackson/shutterstock.com

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