Glazing, beads and vision panels
A small window in a fire door still has to hold for the same time as the door.
Get a priceThe door in the photo is a fairly common sort. A tall narrow vision panel sits in the leaf, and a glazed panel is set above the door in the frame.
Both count towards the fire rating. The glass in a fire door is a particular product, tested with the door for a stated time. Ordinary glass would crack and fall out far too soon.
Where it goes wrong
The beads are the strips that hold the glass in. They come loose, or someone replaces them with plain softwood, and the glass then sits in the wrong packing.
A cracked pane may have been replaced with glass from a builders' merchant. It fits and looks right, but it is the wrong glass, and you cannot tell by looking.
Behind the glass there should be an intumescent glazing tape. It swells in heat, like the strip in the door edge. It can go missing or get painted over.
Some openings have been cut larger than the door allows. A door is tested with a set size of vision panel.
What we do
The glass comes first. Fire-rated glass is normally marked with an etched stamp in one corner. A marked pane that has cracked gets replaced like for like. A pane with no mark we treat as wrong until we find out otherwise.
Loose or wrong beads come out. The right ones go in over fresh tape, with proper fixings.
The panel over a door gets its own look. It is glazed in the frame and often uses a different glass from the leaf below.
Wrong glass is a normal repair and we price it as one. A vision panel cut too big for the door is a bigger job, and sometimes a new leaf is the better answer.
Send the list with the postcode. We will come back with a price for each door.
Get a price