Jeremy Harris

From what I can gather, after a few hours of trying to recover deleted web sites, the responsibilities in this refurbishment project were divided between several different companies, with coordination being by a project manager employed by KCTMO. I'm trying to find out more about the seniority, qualifications etc of the project manager, but it seems that a lot of stuff is still being deleted by KCTMO. The advice to residents in May 2016 (from this source that they haven't yet taken down: http://www.kctmo.org.uk/files/100428_kctmo_rydon_grenfell_tower_newsletter_may_2016_vff.pdf) was this:

I'd second what @Temp says. Our timber framed garage/workshop has a 150mm insulated concrete slab floor, and it has a thick layer of insulation inside the walls and ceiling, with a floored storage loft in the roof space, with a hatch and ladder for access. It's great having it insulate and lined, plus it gives me somewhere to escape to, away from the house.........

That sounds extremely plausible. I recall trying to dig out the actual product testing, and exact test methods used, that related to BBA certification for a different product range some years ago, and the level of obfuscation surrounding what had and what had not been tested, how it had been tested and what the actual BBA certificate related to, rather than the product advertising BS from the manufacturer, convinced me that very often the stated certification was not worth the paper it was written on. I remain firmly convinced that the semi-self regulatory model we have for everything from material testing to building regulatory compliance is very deeply flawed. There seem to be just too many ways that regulations can be circumvented, entirely within the letter of the law and applicable regulations, but wholly against their intent. I think we will have much squirming and sloping of shoulders from all involved in this refurbishment project, as they all seek to pass the blame on to others.

Without a doubt. The only caution I would give is that there are a large number of fake Chinese SSRs around, and they look near-identical to the brand name products that they are imitating. One way to tell is the weight of them, as the fakes often aren't potted, so feel lighter, but unless you're familiar with what the real product is like you can easily be fooled by the Chinese fakes. Not a problem for a reputable brand of product, but it may be an issue if any repairs are carried out.

Yes and no. Some are designed to always fail open, some cheaper ones can fail closed, it depends on the failure mode. An over-current event tends to blow the bond wires, making the SSR go open circuit, a dV/dT failure tends to make the SSR fail closed, due to punch-through. High reliability SSRs are supposed to fail open, and the very few SSR failures I've ever seen have all failed open, so my guess is they may be safer in this respect than conventional relays.

Sadly I'm not near Suffolk, but it may well be a good idea to just get whoever is supplying the building to provide the foundation design, if they can. We did this for our self-build, and the timber frame company designed, provided the structural engineer sign off, and installed the foundations, all as a part of the package. Probably the cheapest way to get the job done, plus it has the big advantage of removing the risk that the foundation dimensions and tolerance may not match the timber frame.

@AliG, there has always been confusion over the term "fire resistant" in terms of building materials, I think. I'm familiar with the term when applied to aircraft materials, where the meaning seems different, in that fire resistant means a material that not only does not itself sustain a fire, but that it will act as a barrier to fire for some period of time. In building regs terms, fire resistance seems to often be confused with resistance to the spread of fire (the Class O rating, for example) not the actual fire resistance of the material. Looking at a bit of video last night, there was a shot of a firefighter leaning out of a window on the tower and levering off a charred layer of the external insulation. It seems clear that the material was still quite thick, although badly charred, so the insulation itself may well have had a degree of fire resistance, but that didn 't stop it breaking down under heat and giving off flammable gasses, leaving behind the charred core. After a bit more digging around I think I know what the differences between the different grades of PIR may be. The "5000" series PIR foams all seem to use the same base polyol to make the foam layers, but it seems that there are different reinforcing layers between the products. All PIR has one or more layers of glass fibre in it, to give it enough strength to be handled (and make it irritating when it's sawn!), but it looks as if the position of these layers may vary from one grade to another. I found this out via a roundabout route, and it's largely guesswork, but the starting point was the "I" series foams, that have a tougher outer surface, so they can both stand foot traffic when laid on floors, and take UFH staples better. It looks like these products have reinforcing layers closer to the surface, to make the surfaces stronger. I think it's possible that the "FR" series foams may have something similar, a surface layer, or layers, that acts to reduce the amount of oxygen that can get to the foam in the even of fire. Celotex are very coy about the detail, and they don't even give any specifics about the supposed fire resistance of their "FR" products, other than in very general terms. I think it seems likely that some form of surface difference may well be the main differentiating factor between the different types, though.

Looks very crisp and neat. I particularly like the shaded balcony, that seems a really good looking, and very practical, feature. I'm not normally a fan of modern design, but have to say that I'd love to live in a house like yours.

Structural engineers are not that expensive, we used one to design a massive, 45m length, 2.5m high, retaining wall, that has tens of tonnes of blocks, steel and concrete in it (see here: http://www.mayfly.eu/2013/07/part-six-there-we-were-digging-this-hole/ and here: http://www.mayfly.eu/2013/07/part-eight-the-wall/ ) and he charged us less than £300, for drawings, concrete and steel specifications etc. A layman can do the calcs, but no insurer will accept them, and the chances are building control may not either. A few hundred pounds spent with a local SE, who knows the ground conditions in your area would be money well spent. The chances are you'd save that if he/she comes up with a design that reduces the amount of concrete by a couple of truckloads.

No, not at all. The foundations need to be specifically designed to take the imposed loads and the ground conditions, with an acceptable safety factor. They absolutely do not need to be over-engineered, that would be foolish and a waste of money. The point is that you can't design the foundations without knowing the imposed loads and the local ground conditions - both vary a great deal, so just guessing could mean you have foundations that are grossly over-engineered, or grossly under-engineered.

In our case it was the window suppliers themselves who checked the opening dimensions and fitted the windows, and although they could have claimed that any window openings that were the wrong size was my fault, as I'd had to sign the drawing of each individual window and door when placing the order, they still sent someone around to check.

Yes, an MVHR with a pollen filter on the intake would certainly reduce the level of pollen inside the house, as long as it's fairly well sealed and the doors and windows are kept closed when there is a lot of pollen around. Our MVHR has a pollen filter on the intake as standard, and I think this is a fairly common feature. If you get an MVHR that doesn;t have a pollen filter then you should be able to swap out the one it has with one that will filter out pollen. I had a large batch of filters made up for our MVHR by Jasun Envirocare, and they turned out to be a lot cheaper than the standard filters supplied by the Genvex dealer, and a very effective at removing very fine particles from the incoming air.

It's not the weight, but the imposed load that matters, and to give any meaningful advice we'd need to know what the load applied to the bearing points on the foundation would be, and the properties of the underlying ground (max allowable bearing load, heave characteristics, etc). I'd love to just be able to say "dig out this, add this, and you're done", but it just isn't anywhere near that easy. The foundations need to be designed to cope with the load and conditions that the building will impose on them, and that's not just the weight of the building, but the loads from wind, snow and ice, the live loads from anything stored in or on the building, etc. Some of these depend on the location and the degree of exposure to wind, plus design features, like whether the building has large openings, long lengths of wall that may need wind supports, etc..

You really need to know exactly what the soil characteristics are like, before anything else. A slab, with local reinforcement for point loads, might work, or it might not. Trench foundations may need to be deep, and have clay boards, or they may not. Without knowing what the soil max bearing allowable stress and heave characteristics are you can't easily design a foundation system. You mention a cart shed type building, so is this a traditional oak frame, or similar, with large section posts that support the structure? If so, then the point loads that this impose will need to be taken into account. Much of the static load from a building like this can come from the roofing materials. Pantiles vary a bit, depending on what they are made of, clay being a bit lighter than concrete, for example. You need to know the imposed loads on the foundations, and they can only really be provided by the building designer. 100m² is a large building, bigger than the footprint of a lot of houses, so this is not an insignificant foundation requirement.

By eating small amounts of honey made from the flowers that have pollen you're allergic to, your immune system can get desensitised to the pollen allergens. It takes time to work, but it is effective. A former colleague found out about it a few years ago, after suffering from hayfever as soon as the rape seed plants were in flower. Rape seed honey isn't that pleasant, but it was effective at significantly reducing her hay fever

Welcome, The foundation choice depends on so many different factors that it's impossible to give a definitive answer, I'm afraid. Things that need to be considered in the foundation design (assuming this is a non-habitable building - there are other things that impact buildings that have to comply with Part L1a) would be: - Topography of the area where the building is going to go, and whether there is made up ground or the need to retain any banks that might arise from levelling the area. - The loads imposed on the underlying ground by the building, including point loads from something like a frame that had heavy support timbers (for example, traditional oak frame) - The nature of the ground under the building, including its maximum allowable bearing stress and whether it is made of a soil type that may be subject to movement (like some clay soils and heave). - The local hydrology and depth of the water table. - The proximity to services, drains, trees and tree roots. On clay soil, it depends on the type of clay. Some clay soils are subject to heave with changes in moisture content, some aren't, and the foundation design will have to take account of this. If the frame puts high point loads on parts of the foundation, then it may well be that the foundation design has to make provision for supporting walls that don't impose a uniform load, so that may mean pads where the point loads are.

I think we were lucky, in that we had people calling in to the site asking if we had any scrap wood. Most of the scrap pallets went to someone local who turned them into fencing, and a lot of the scrap larch offcuts were taken by a young chap who was going to cut them up and sell them as kindling - I think he did well out of it, as he took three small via loads away!

I suspect the greatest risk may be the heating element fitted to some heat pumps, including frost-free fridge freezers. There seems to have been a few problems with the controls for defrost heating elements having stuck on, causing the element to overheat and melt the surrounding plastic lining/insulation in some frost-free fridge freezers, as well as some fires caused by certain models. The idea of a heating element that can overheat in the event of the switch or relay that controls it getting stuck on seems to be a fairly significant risk. Relays do get stuck on; one of our PIR switches failed a few months ago in just this way, the relay stuck in the on position. It was only switching a few tens of watts of LED lighting, too, so shouldn't have failed, as it was working well within its rated current. The wiring in a new installation shouldn't pose a risk, as there should be both earth leakage protection and over-current protection on the circuit, so if the cable is sized correctly I doubt this would be a problem. A heating element internal failure may well cause an earth leakage fault, too. The kettle element failures, and one immersion heater failure, that we've had over the years have tended to trip the RCD from earth leakage.

I produced an "as designed" window schedule, based on the plans I drew up, to get quotes from window suppliers and select the one we decided to contract with. The frame company confirmed that the frame had been manufactured to the required dimensions (10mm bigger in both axis than the actual window size, as required by the window supplier) before it left their factory. The day after the frame was erected the window supplier sent their representative over to double check that the on site opening dimensions were correct and just over a week later the windows arrived and were fitted. All told there was a fair bit of checking, first by the frame manufacturer confirming that the openings were built to the right size in the factory, again by me when the frame was erected and once more by the window supplier shortly before the windows were fitted. I don't think you can check the window sizes, openings and specifications too many times!

FWIW, bonfires are now unlawful in some areas, too. We have a bonfire ban now, after years of the valley filling up with smoke from thoughtless people who light them on windless days. It's made a massive difference so far this summer (the first year the ban has been in force). To make this work, there was a coordinated effort to improve green waste collection, so that those who used to have bonfires can now get rid of hedge clippings etc more easily.

I've bought some very good cells from these people, around three times now: http://www.componentshop.co.uk/batteries/radio-control/single-cells The set I bought around 7 years ago for two home made LED torches are still going strong, as are the slightly younger ones in my old NiCd Makita screwdriver.

Sadly we're seeing the organisational skills of the disruptive Militant Tendency/Momentum group actively bringing people out on the streets and turning this into an anti-government protest. The fact that it was under a Labour government that a great deal of this harm was done seems to have passed them by.

We've already seen it. Loads of web pages have been taken down by companies involved in this project already. I will bet that a lot of staff spent the past two days erasing hard discs and shredding documents as fast as they possibly could.............

A part of the refurbishment was the installation of a smoke clearance system for the central well of the building. From the report so far, it seems this didn't work well. That surprises me, as on the new building that I was responsible for in my last job, when we tested the smoke extraction system, the suction was so great when the ceiling smoke louvres opened as to pull the bottom of the sliding doors into the ground floor atrium off their bottom runners and into the office, with them sitting at around 20 degrees off vertical due to the air flow coming in through the now open doors.

Just to put the status of Grenfell Tower into perspective for a moment, look at this advert on Right Move: http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-to-rent/property-56848189.html I thought this was exclusively social housing. Seems I was very mistaken.