Shared house and student let door checks in Uxbridge
Bedroom doors, kitchen doors and the stair, checked room by room.
Get a priceA shared house has more doors per person than any other kind of home.
Each bedroom has one. The kitchen has one. There is usually a stair door or a door onto the hall. In a six-bed house that is sometimes a dozen doors, all opened by people who do not own them.
Why these doors go wrong
Tenants move in and out. A door that closed fine in September gets a poster stuck on it, a hook screwed into it and a gap stuffed with a draught excluder by January.
The common fault is a wedge. Somebody props the kitchen door open because the room gets warm, or props the bedroom door open with a shoe. It is not malice. It is ordinary life in a house.
The second common fault is the lock. A tenant fits a bolt or a keypad for privacy and drills a large hole near the edge of the door.
The third is the closer. Fire doors in houses are often fitted with a closer to meet a licence condition, and then the arm is taken off because it slams.
Brunel and the area around it
Brunel University is on the edge of Uxbridge, so student lets are common here. They tend to be let by the room and often changed over in the summer.
That timing helps. A house that is empty in July or August is easy for us to inspect, and any repairs can be done before the new tenants arrive. If you can give us a window then, we will use it.
Mandatory licensing
A house let to five or more people from two or more households needs a mandatory HMO licence. Councils attach conditions to it, and fire doors often feature. Check the conditions on your licence and the date it comes up for renewal. We write our report so you can show it to the council.
We do not tell you what your licence requires. That is for the council to say.
What we write down
Each door gets a label such as "bedroom 3, first floor". The report says what is on the door, what is wrong and a photo to match.
If a door is a panelled door, we say so. Panelled doors tend to void the fire rating once they are cut or fitted with a closer. A plain certified doorset is the safer replacement.
Price
Houses are priced by the number of doors and how many bedrooms we can get into. Tell us the postcode, how many bedrooms and when the house is empty.
Questions we get asked
Do tenants need to be in?
Not for the rooms. We need the landlord or agent to give us access. Tenants should have notice.
Does a door in a rented room count as a fire door?
If it is on the escape route or part of your fire safety arrangements, yes. Your assessor can confirm which.
Send the postcode and a rough number of doors. A price comes back the same day.
Get a price