Door Closers And Why They Stop Working

A door closer has one job: return the door to the fully closed and latched position, every time.

When it stops doing that, the door still works from a resident's point of view. Which is why a failed closer on a fire door can sit unreported for a year.

Why it matters

A fire door only performs if it is closed. A fire door propped, or hanging a few millimetres open because the closer no longer pulls it home, provides no separation at all.

Which puts closers in the compliance category rather than the hardware category, alongside the rest of the [fire door](/blog/fire-doors-in-residential-buildings) requirements. They are inspected as part of the building's fire safety measures and they are one of the more common items to fail an inspection.

The same applies to smoke doors in corridors, doors onto fire stairs, and doors between a carpark and a residential lobby.

How they fail

Loss of hydraulic fluid. A closer is a spring with a hydraulic damper. When it leaks, the door slams or drifts. A closer with oil weeping down the door face is finished.

Adjustment drifting. Closing speed, latching speed and back check are adjustable. They move over time and after somebody forces the door.

The door dropped on its hinges. The closer is now fighting a door that no longer sits square in the frame. Fixing the closer without fixing the hinges achieves nothing.

The arm hit or bent, usually by somebody moving furniture.

Fixings loose in the door or the frame. Very common. The closer pulls against its own screws every time the door shuts, and in a hollow door or a light frame the fixings eventually work loose and the whole unit wobbles.

Wrong closer for the door. Closers are sized to door width and weight. An undersized unit on a heavy door never latches properly. An oversized one on a light door is too hard for an elderly resident to open.

Nothing to latch into. The door reaches the frame and does not engage, because the strike plate or the keeper is out of alignment. The closer is fine and the door is not closed.

The force problem

A closer strong enough to shut a heavy door reliably can be too heavy for some residents to open.

There is a genuine tension there, and it is not resolved by turning the spring down until the door stops latching. The resolution is the right closer, correctly adjusted, with the door hung true and the latch aligned so it engages without needing force.

Where a door genuinely has to be both self-closing and easy to open, the answer is usually a hold-open device tied into the fire alarm, so the door stands open normally and closes on alarm. That is an electrical and fire system job as well as a hardware one, and it is the correct fix rather than a compromise.

Illegal hold-opens

Wedges, hooks, tied-back arms and removed closers are all defects and all common.

They exist for a reason: somebody found the door inconvenient. Removing the wedge without addressing why it was there means it comes back within a week.

Which is why the useful response is to ask what the door is doing. A door onto a bin room that everybody props needs an electromagnetic hold-open, or a different door, or a re-think of how waste moves through the building, as in [garbage chutes and waste rooms](/blog/garbage-chutes-and-waste-rooms).

Checking them

It takes a minute per door and almost nobody does it.

Open the door fully and let it go. It should close smoothly, slow near the frame, and latch without help. Do it from a quarter open as well, because a door that latches from wide open sometimes fails from nearly closed, and that is the position it is actually left in.

Check for oil on the door face. Check the fixings by hand. Check the door sits square in the frame with an even gap.

Getting it right

Closers are cheap relative to what they do. Replacing every closer in a building's common areas is a small item and it resolves a recurring fire safety finding permanently.

Worth doing alongside the hinges, the latches and the seals, because those four items together are what makes a door close, and replacing one of them while the other three are worn produces a door that still does not work. It is the same logic as any [sticking door or window hardware](/blog/sliding-doors-and-window-hardware-that-stick) job.

Ample services door closers and door hardware across apartment buildings in the eastern suburbs and inner city, with the fire door requirements handled as part of the same round.