Grenfell Fire

Oops, mundane was a poor choice of words on my part. Cyclic would have been better. As in, incident, outrage, inquiry, new regulations followed in short course by a new incident, outrage, inquiry, new regulations etc…

I’d be surprised if recently built residential towers nearer the river would be afflicted by the same problems. They would have fire retardant cladding & sprinkler systems. The scandal seems to be that despite requests for similar being made of the council, and despite their bulging coffers, adequate funding to provide similar resilience couldn’t be found for residents in the scummier end of the borough.

1 Like

friend of mine living in a tower block flat that was returned, he was very concerned about the breaching of fire compartmentalisation design in at original build but at refurbishment breached by the installation of new ducts and cut-outs for new paperwork.

I was once party to a fire service reconstruction and simulation of the fire spread at the Glasgow School of Art in 2014. It was astonishing how after many refurbishments, cut-outs for new services made pathways for fire spread as did old disused but not removed ducts, along with false ceilings

Built in filing?

Seriously though, any cut outs through fire rated walls must be “firestopped” that is made good to at least the same fire resistance rating as the wall. Any duct through fire rated walls must have a fire damper - a mechanical item which has a temperature activated trigger which automatically seals the duct in the event of a fire - these are all basic building regs.

1 Like

spellchecker

I agree, problem my mate had was that not every single cut out was checked and the standard of work “making good” was shoddy at best.

A good Construction Manager wouldn’t let that happen :thumbsup:

2 Likes

:grinning:

Problem solved then, sort that lot out, fit some sprinklers and alarms and all will be safe. My heart fucking sinks listening to all, and I do mean all, the politicians jumping on the knee jerk reaction band waggon.

When will we ever learnn

1 Like

If the government weren’t about to shake their money tree to give £2Bn to the DUP they might even be able to find the money to pay for the work needed. Was listening to a chartered surveyor on R5 this morning describing the vast iceberg of building reg shortcomings accumulated over decades that Grenfell has exposed the tip of.

1 Like

So either building regs are a total joke, or corners have been cut by builders somewhere…
In any case manufacturers shouldn’t even be allowed to make combustible stuff, let’s see what the inquiry reveals, but someone needs stringing up for this glaring calamity, imo…

It’s a bit more complicated than that (do you have wooden trusses in your roof ?), hence Bob’s ‘jumping on the knee jerk reaction bandwagon’ comment I suspect.

The fact is that if you apply continual downward cost pressure on the public sector and then insist that some of the money that remains has to be diverted into the pockets of private sector shareholders you will inevitably find that what’s left will ony be sufficient to fund a shoddy job (building regulations, every aspect of social housing provision, pre-emptive interventions by the fire service, post-disaster responses). Even infants understand that better stuff costs more money. Only in the fairyland inhabited by cost-cutting politicians is it possible to shut your eyes and imagine that you can get quality on the cheap.

VB

2 Likes

In my experience, rather than deal with real inefficiencies, including things like non-jobs and pointlessly deep hierarchal structures where even the assistants have deputies and they have assistant deputies too, they’ll look to cost cutting things like this because they believe its transactional, worth the risk (to somebody else), and avoids having to grasp the nettle of the real problems which are too hard and aren’t easily resolved by whatever party based dogma they would normally apply.

Nail. Head.

VB

Yep - (apparently) not using the non-flammable cladding for Grenfell saved just £4.5k. which, if the total cost of the refurb was £8.5m, was a saving of .0005% :rage:

That’s Value Engineering for you

Have you ever met local authority purchasing depts? They would see £4.5K as a major win.

2 Likes

I appreciate this doesn’t exonerate everyone in the council or central government, but I do hope it will give a few internet blowhards pause before they blame their favourite political scapegoat a mere hours after a disaster like this happens.

2 Likes

You’re right. It doesn’t.

That’s why I wrote it.
http://imgur.com/t56wXs2

2 Likes