Fire stopping in Borehamwood
Most of the gaps are above your head, in places nobody has looked at since the building went up.
Get a priceStand in a corridor and look up. You see ceiling tiles.
Behind them is a space, usually full of cable trays, pipes and ducts. Walls that look like they end at the tiles often carry on above them. Or should.
When somebody removes a tile and looks, they sometimes find that the wall stops at the ceiling and the space above runs over the top of it.
What the space above hides
Walls that were never taken up to the slab.
Cavity barriers cut for a duct and left open.
A pipe passing through a wall with nothing round it.
Old holes from services that were removed years ago.
None of that is visible from below, which is why it gets missed in a quick walk round.
How we deal with it
We lift tiles, or cut an access hatch with your agreement, and look along the whole length of the wall.
Where the wall stops short, a cavity barrier or board closes the gap. See cavity barriers.
Where pipes or cables go through, they get a proper seal. See penetration sealing.
We photograph each one before the tile goes back.
Working in the space
Ceiling voids are tight and often have little light. It slows the work, so we say in the price how much of the void we expect to cover.
If we find more than we expected, we tell you before carrying on. The price is not quietly raised.
Borehamwood
The fire and rescue service for Hertfordshire is Hertfordshire Fire and Rescue Service.
We drive from Luton. A visit works best as a day on one building rather than an hour on several.
Questions we get asked
Will you leave ceiling tiles damaged?
We lift them carefully and refit them. If one is already cracked and breaks, we tell you.
Do I need to empty the rooms?
Not usually. We work from a stepladder in the corridor, and the tiles over rooms stay in place unless the wall runs through them.
Send us the postcode and a photo or two. We will tell you what it needs and give you a price.
Get a price