Above-the-ceiling areas are often thoughtlessly penetrated and ill-maintained, resulting in countless unsealed or improperly sealed penetrations. These penetrations affect the continuity of the wall assembly and, consequently, the fire rating. Whether you need help identifying where these penetrations are or assurance that they are appropriately sealed, we can help.

Dampers are often forgotten due to their infrequent inspection/testing intervals and above-ceiling orientation. Additionally, testing dampers often yields misrepresented inspection results as many vendors skirt the code requirements that necessitate full closure of the damper during testing. This is our promise to you: our damper technicians will observe each damper closing completely and then will correctly reset it so you can rest assured that the yielded inspection results are accurate so that you know exactly where you stand.

In July 2017, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) adopted the 2012 edition of the NFPA Life Safety Code, which includes requirements for maintaining, inspecting, and testing fire and smoke doors in healthcare facilities that receive Medicare/Medicaid reimbursement. CMS went on to say that non-rated door assemblies, including corridor doors and smoke barrier doors, are not subject to the annual inspection and testing requirements of either NFPA 80 or NFPA 105 but that these doors should be maintained as part of routine facility maintenance program (S&C 17-38-LSC). Our door inspections involve a comprehensive review of all of the aforementioned door assembly types, and the findings of the assessment are communicated to you digitally in the form of an exhaustive report accompanied by a copy of your existing life safety drawing with icons overlaid that demonstrate the location of each door and current pass/fail status. If you’d like, you can view a sample door inspection report by clicking here.

The codes that govern doors relevant to life safety are numerous and complex. Repairing deficient doors within this population requires a skill set comparable to that of a commercial carpenter and a deep understanding of life safety code. This is never more evident than when we come behind vendors performing door installations and repairs and find that though the door may look fine, it either functions incorrectly or presents at least one non-compliant component that would inevitably fail a door inspection. In either case, an individual has the opportunity to leave the door in a compliant state, and most of the time, they fail to do so, presumably because they lack adequate knowledge of the life safety code. With this in mind, we are proud to say that all of our door repair technicians have a background in life safety code which translates to this: not only will the door repair look good and function correctly, you can bet it will be code compliant too.