Wedges, hooks and bins: how doors get held open

We have photographed fire doors held open with wedges, bins, chairs, fire buckets, boxes of printer paper, a house brick and, once, a very heavy cat. Nobody does it to cause harm. They do it because a closed door is a nuisance.

Understanding the nuisance is the first step to removing the wedge.

The door is heavy. Fire doors are denser than ordinary doors and often have a strong closer, so people carrying things or pushing a trolley struggle. The fix is often an adjustment. A closer can be set to a lower force, and a latch can be eased. Some doors need a different closer altogether.

The corridor gets hot or stuffy. Closed doors stop air moving. If an office gets warm in summer, doors will be opened. Ventilation, fans or opening windows in rooms can stop the pressure to prop them.

People need to see or hear. In a care home, staff want to hear a call. In a school, a teacher wants to see the corridor. These are good reasons, and there is a device for them: a hold-open that is held by a magnet and released by the alarm, so the door closes by itself. It does what the wedge was doing, and it also does what the wedge cannot.

Doors get in the way of deliveries. Shops, offices with a post room and hotels all prop a door for a trolley. Agree a spot for the trolley, or use a hold-open for the hour of deliveries, and take it off after.

Nobody owns the door. In shared buildings, a door may be shut by one tenant and propped by another, with the landlord unaware. A short notice and a regular walk help. So does a simple route to report a door that will not close.

The thing not to do is put a notice on the door and hope. Notices work for a week. A fix works for years.

Not every door needs to be shut all day. Some are meant to stand open, and the right device makes that safe. The question to ask is whether the door will close if the alarm sounds. If a person has to remember to do it, it will not happen when it matters.

When we find a wedged door, we say so on the report and we say what the wedge was for. A report that only says “remove the wedge” gets the wedge removed once. A report that says “the door sticks on the carpet, ease the bottom edge” gets the problem fixed.

Take a walk round your building and count the doors that do not shut. For each one, ask why. The answers will tell you what to fix.