I'm thinking of changing my cheap internal doors for fire doors

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I'm used to substantial fire doors in my flat. The new house has lightweight doors that seem a bit cheap and nasty, and some need rehung or other attention. If replacing them anyway, I thought I'd go for fire doors but would appreciate any advice. I've noticed the cheap doors are hung with 2 sets of hinges while my fire doors have 3 sets, so presumably the frame may need some work if the hinge positions are changed.

do you keep all of your doors closed all the time?

otherwise "fire doors" are just very heavy, very expensive normal doors

I had a fire door fitted when we converted the garages and my god it is heavy. Yes they are hung with 3 hinges and they have to be heavy duty ones.

I have those 6 panel moulded doors and am in the process of changing them to modern sort of flat ones.

I had to cut the 6 panel door in half to fit it into my car to take it to the tip, it literally had a wooden frame running down the sides, across the top and bottom and the middle with no filling at all. Just an extra bit of wood for where the door handle was

My advice would be avoid the fire doors (very expensive) and go for a solid core door.

Thanks, I'll look into solid core doors.

The ones in the new house are just cheap things and rather than spend money on fixing / rehanging / changing the handles (to others with fixing holes in similar positions) I thought I'd look into other options rather than spending money on these doors that look rubbish.

Ok it looks like the doors I've been used to for the past 10 years are solid core fire doors costing several hundred pounds each. And the doors in the house I've just bought are worth about 30p.

I like fire doors.

As well as blocking fires when they are shut on an unattended room, for example at night, and protecting your escape route by preventing fire and smoke in the passage and stairway, they are heavy and substantial, feel good, not flimsy, and are good at blocking noise.

Cheap hollow doors are made of air with a thin coating of hardboard or ply and are complete rubbish.

My favourite is this style (it helps if you have, or like, an Edwardian house). This one is made by Premdoor and is available from various sources. It is suitable for painting. I would avoid the ones with a fake grainy surface. Depending what you like and what you can afford, you can also get veneered or solid wood doors in a great variety of styles. You can get non-fire doors to match, for example for cupboards or non-habitable rooms, but I recommend a heavy, sound-blocking door on bathrooms and cloakrooms

You will need three suitable hinges, as the doors are very heavy, and I recommend lift-off hinges. You will most likely need new door lining ("doorframes") to suit. You need a slightly longer latch or lock than usual. An older house will look better with a 100mm or 150mm backset and knobs.

A joiner or carpenter can fit doors much better and faster than a handywoman or general builder, and will also know good local sources of doors. For best resistance to smoke, draughts and noise, and if building regulations require it, fit furry pile "brush" smoke strips to the grooves in the frame, and inject fire-resisting expanding foam between the wall and the lining.

Hi there, we have just fitted fire doors into a renovated property. I shopped around a lot as we needed 14. I ended up buyin tem from deanta. Ours are called the Ely. They're oak and look stunning. They ended up costing £129 each. A real bargain and don't look at all like normal fire doors. We then just bought some osmo wax Oil and applied two coats. Everyone who has been to our house says they look stunning. A real gem of a find!

You'll need a smoke detector in every room otherwise a fire would be contained for a while, but not be detectable right away.

but that's not an argument against fire doors, it's an argument in favour of (interconnected) fire detectors. An ordinary hollow hardboard door will delay spread of smoke until the fire has taken hold.

for internal doors have a look at someone like www.jeld-wen.co.uk/ they arent particularly expensive but they are well finished. they have retailers all over the country.

I have cats. All of my internal doors are kept open - even the fire doors.

You can get decent quality doors without going for fire doors. Any builders providers would have catalogues.

you can, but substantial solid-feeling doors are rare and expensive, except in fire-door ranges where they are very common because they are mass-market, especially the paint-grade doors which are not intended to be veneered and varnished.

good-quality "solid wood" doors are mostly veneered, and are thinner and lighter, and not so good for blocking sound.

pigletjohn the doors we got from jeld-wen are solid core doors which are veneered on the front/back but the lippings are 15mm each side and top/bottom so there is enough material on them so they can be altered quite easily. they are only 35mm doors but certainly arent light and shut noise out really well.

I'm sure yours are very nice. What price?

i think they were 80+VAT each but we are on good terms with the builders merchants as we have bought so much stuff from them over the past 2 yrs.

sorry me again - the doors at 80 +vat were oak veneered. we also got a 45mm single solid core door from the same supplier for our garage and for them to supply the door, cut it to our size and put the lippings on we were 56+vat - this was just a plain door which was to be painted so there was no detail at all on the door - the oak doors were 4 panel doors.

that sounds quite a good price for a veneered solid core door.

I see there are getting to be a few more on the market now, so perhaps people are turning away from hollow doors. I hope so. I wonder if it is because they get to handle heavy doors in offices and hotels?

Brilliant! Thanks everyone for this information. I am off to look into the links.