The fault was there before you owned the building

A fire damper fitted 400mm inside a ductwork run, well past the line of the fire-rated wall it was supposed to protect. It tests perfectly. The spring works, the blade drops, the fusible link is intact. And it is completely useless, because the fire it is meant to stop will get through the wall before it ever reaches the damper.

That is the awkward truth about fire damper faults. Plenty of them are not wear and tear. They are defects baked in during construction, often years before you took on the building, and they only surface when a competent contractor finally carries out a drop test and looks at how the thing was actually installed.

Under the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005, the responsible person must keep fire safety measures in efficient working order, and the origin of the fault does not matter. If a damper cannot do its job, you carry the risk. So it helps to know what these inherited faults look like.

Wrong position relative to the fire barrier

A fire damper only works if it sits in the plane of the compartment wall or floor it protects. Fit it too far into the duct, on the wrong side of the barrier, or in a duct run that never passes through a fire-rated element at all, and it protects nothing.

This is more common than most owners expect, particularly where ceilings were reconfigured, walls moved, or extract routes altered during a refurbishment. The damper stayed where it was; the compartment line moved. Now there is a gap where fire and smoke pass freely, and a perfectly functional damper sitting uselessly a foot away.

No fire-stopping around the damper frame

The damper itself is only part of the assembly. The gap between the damper casing and the wall or floor opening has to be fire-stopped to the correct specification, using the right sealant, batt or mortar for that penetration.

What turns up instead: expanding foam, plasterboard offcuts, or nothing at all. A neat damper with an open annular gap around it is not a fire barrier. During a survey this is one of the most frequent findings, and it is invisible unless someone opens up the access panel and inspects the perimeter.

Missing or inadequate access

A damper installed with no access panel, or with one that opens onto a solid ceiling or a bank of pipes, was never testable from day one. When a contractor reports a damper as "inaccessible", log it as a defect to resolve, not a permanent gap. We cover access, and the faults that develop in service, in why fire dampers fail.

The damper that was never a fire damper

Some dampers found in fire-rated positions are volume control or balancing dampers, fitted during the mechanical install to regulate airflow. They look broadly similar to an untrained eye. They have no fusible link, no fire rating and no certification.

A responsible person told the extract system had "dampers throughout" may assume they are protected. Until someone competent identifies each unit by type and checks it against the design intent, that assumption is unsafe.

Blades and links that were compromised from the start

Blades bent or dented during rough handling on site. Actuators wired incorrectly on motorised units. Screws driven through the casing into the blade path, jamming the mechanism (see the issues tek screws cause fire dampers). These are installation faults, not ageing faults, and they mean the damper has never been capable of closing since the day it went in.

What this means for you

The practical point is this: a first inspection of fire dampers in an older building is not a maintenance visit. It is a discovery exercise. You are finding out what you actually have, whether it is in the right place, whether it is the right product, and whether it can be reached and tested at all.

Expect the first report to raise defects. That is the system working. What matters is that each finding is recorded against the specific damper, prioritised by risk, and fed into a remediation programme with a competent contractor. Ductwork fire dampers should be tested at least annually, and more often where the ductwork carries dust or similar contamination, so the first survey sets the baseline everything else runs from.

Inheriting these faults is not a failing on your part. Leaving them undocumented and unaddressed once you know, however, is.