Grenfell Tower fire

[Jeremy Harris]

15 minutes ago, ADLIan said:

Appr Doc B2 already covers the issues faced at Grenfell Tower. Not sure if it's lack of understanding or enforcement is the issue. Cannot copy from the AD but see Section 12 on External walls, in particular paras 12.5 and 12.7. Perhaps these particular statements need emphasising more - capitals, in bold & underlined!!

 

Ian

 

 

I agree, in part, but would questions the actual approval testing required under BS476, as it seems to have weaknesses when it comes to materials used for EWI.  The catch-all in Part B was clearly not enforced, but then that's not that uncommon, I fear.

 

I suspect that, in this case, no one connected the long history ofEWI  facade fires with what was being done to Grenfell Tower.  How on earth the designers of the insulation, ventilation cavity and cladding configuration managed to ignore the regs and the very clear insulation installation requirements I don't know.

[ADLIan]

BS476, surface spread of flame, isn't referenced by any of the current standards covering insulation materials so I'm at a loss as to why some manufacturer even quote this. Correct BS is BSEN 13501. This measures reaction to fire, flammable or non-combustible (with points between) and importantly smoke generation and the presence of burning droplets.

[Ferdinand]

47 minutes ago, JSHarris said:

 

 

I agree, in part, but would questions the actual approval testing required under BS476, as it seems to have weaknesses when it comes to materials used for EWI.  The catch-all in Part B was clearly not enforced, but then that's not that uncommon, I fear.

 

I suspect that, in this case, no one connected the long history ofEWI  facade fires with what was being done to Grenfell Tower.  How on earth the designers of the insulation, ventilation cavity and cladding configuration managed to ignore the regs and the very clear insulation installation requirements I don't know.

 

Did they use Private or Council BCO?

 

C4 News gave a platform to a Planning Officer this evening to talk about the perils of Privatised BCO !

Edited June 26, 2017 by Ferdinand

[jack]

I think I read it was privately inspected.

[Jeremy Harris]

There's no difference, in theory, as LABC isn't, directly, a part of the council, but a separate trading body, I believe, that is self-funded and run like a business.  From what I can tell, it looks like this work was overseen by LABC under a Building Notice, as the original Full Plans submission was never approved.  There's a link here to the current status from BC: https://www.rbkc.gov.uk/bconline/buildingControlDetails.do?activeTab=summary&keyVal=_RBKC_BCAPR_124682

[Ferdinand]

19 hours ago, jamiehamy said:

I see John McDonnell made a helpful pronouncement from Glastonbury that the deaths were murder.  For a variety of reasons that man is a moron. 

 

Somewhat political para - some may wish to skip.

 

I would not call McDonnell a moron. When he was on Ken Livingstone's team he was competent at his job. I think he knows exactly what he is doing .. which is to exploit this to promote his political ends. And if that involves making untrue claims to whip up partisan audiences and fomenting whatever he wants to foment, that would be just fine by him. McDonnell has a record for that as long as Pinocchio's Nose.

 

Now non-political

 

Here is the research report commissioned by the Mayor of London Sadiq Khan, ad published in Nov 2016, showing that the "cuts" of 10 Fire Stations did not degrade the performance of the London Fire Brigade to below acceptable standards

https://www.london.gov.uk/about-us/mayor-london/our-publications/review-resourcing-london-fire-brigade

 

and the press release

https://www.london.gov.uk/press-releases/mayoral/overall-the-service-has-coped-well-with-cuts

 

The proof of the pudding is that Mayor Sadiq has not instantly decided to restore those Firestations, Fire Appliances and Firemen. The reason it is not necessary is because incidents have been on a downward trend for 2 decades, and there has been excellent general work around fire alarms etc. The last 5 years:

 

 

To be fair to Mayor Sadiq, the report does suggest that the Phase 2 suggested by Boris Johnson should not be pursued. That however, is not what they are blaming.

 

Personally I think that £50m of capital raised by selling 10 fire stations, and sites for a couple of hundred flats with their concomitant S106s and reuse of redundant buildings, was probably an excellent decision. I thought so at the time when I read the various reports, and I have not changed my view on that.

 

Ferdinand

 

Edited June 27, 2017 by Ferdinand

[jack]

10 hours ago, JSHarris said:

There's no difference, in theory, as LABC isn't, directly, a part of the council, but a separate trading body, I believe, that is self-funded and run like a business.

 

The LABC may be a separate body, but local authority inspectors are council employees. Whether there's a practical difference, on average, between private and public building control inspection is probably impossible to generalise.

 

But you're right, it looks like the local authority inspectors did the work. No idea where I got the contrary idea - I'm sure I read it somewhere last week! 

[Ferdinand]

Highly intelligent question from a journalist demonstrating full knowledge of how planning and building standards work:

 

"Do you know who wrote the Building Regulations Part B?"

 

Edited June 27, 2017 by Ferdinand

[Jeremy Harris]

FWIW, this is the cut and pasted relevant section of Part B that applied at the time that the application for building regs approval was made for Grenfell Tower:

 

Quote

External wall construction

 

12.5 The external envelope of a building should not provide a medium for fire spread if it is likely to be a risk to health or safety. The use of combustible materials in the cladding system and extensive cavities may present such a risk in tall buildings.

External walls should either meet the guidance given in paragraphs 12.6 to 12.9 or meet the performance criteria given in the BRE Report Fire performance of external thermal insulation for walls of multi storey buildings (BR 135) for cladding systems using full scale test data from BS 8414-1:2002 or BS 8414-2:2005.

The total amount of combustible material may also be limited in practice by the provisions for space separation in Section 13 (see paragraph 13.7 onwards).

 

External surfaces

 

12.6 The external surfaces of walls should meet the provisions in Diagram 40. Where a mixed use building includes Assembly and Recreation Purpose Group(s) accommodation, the external surfaces of walls should meet the provisions in Diagram 40c.

Insulation Materials/Products

 

12.7 In a building with a storey 18m or more above ground level any insulation product, filler material (not including gaskets, sealants and similar) etc. used in the external wall construction should be of limited combustibility (see Appendix A). This restriction does not apply to masonry cavity wall construction which complies with Diagram 34 in Section 9.

 

Cavity barriers

 

12.8 Cavity barriers should be provided in accordance with Section 9.

12.9 In the case of a an external wall construction, of a building which, by virtue of paragraph 9.10d (external cladding system with a masonry or concrete inner leaf), is not subject to the provisions of Table 13 Maximum dimensions of cavities in non-domestic buildings, the surfaces which face into cavities should also meet the provisions of Diagram 40.

 

Edited June 27, 2017 by JSHarris

[Temp]

16 hours ago, ProDave said:

An interesting twist to this saga.

 

There was a cladding fire on a high rise in Scotland in 1999. Following that there was an enquiry, and the result was the building regulations were changed with the new regulations coming into force in 2005.  As a result, no high rise buildings in Scotland are thought to be at risk.

 

I wonder if the enquiry in England will ask why was this information not shared (perhaps it was?) and why were English building regulations not similarly tightened?

 

The info was shared and a report published in 2000. The recommendations

 

https://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm199900/cmselect/cmenvtra/109/10908.htm

 

I wonder if Tony Blair's government acted on it?

 

 

 

 

 

[Temp]

BBC News had some sort of fire expert on earlier today (sometime between 10 and 11am) but it was a poor interview I thought.

 

He suggested that the government were trying to claim the rain screen was "insulation" and that the new tests were treating it accordingly and that's why it was failing. You could see he wasn't happy about this, mentioned the ventilation gap and cited some documents.

 

The implication was that the rain screen passed the regulations for a rain screen but not the regulations for insulation.  

[Jeremy Harris]

There really is some appalling decision making and media reporting going on, with decisions seemingly being based on pretty pointless "fire tests" on 250mm square samples of rain screen cladding, for example.

 

The government should step in and start managing this, bringing in people from the BRE to make firm and authoritative statements about the way the technical investigation is going, but presumably everyone is hamstrung by the fact that there is a criminal investigation underway.  Normally, I'd agree with the principle of not releasing information that may be evidence in a later trial, but I think there needs to be an exception here, as the current display of "headless chicken" behaviour is both causing unnecessary distress and costing people and the taxpayer a great deal of money.

Edited June 27, 2017 by JSHarris
typo

[Temp]

Thing is they don't want to be accused of inaction. Lots of action, even if of dubious value, is seen as better than doing nothing.

 

[Ian]

@JSHarris

There's also the 'catch all' of "Material Alteration" in Part B which applies to existing buildings that are being altered:

Quote:

0.2 MATERIAL ALTERATION

".....requires that once that building work has

been completed, the building as a whole must

comply with the relevant requirements of

Schedule 1 or, where it did not comply before,

must be no more unsatisfactory than it was

before the work was carried out"

 

Schedule 1 is attached below for reference

Edited June 27, 2017 by Ian

[Jeremy Harris]

I suspect that whether showing compliance with Schedule 1 of The Building Regulations 1991 using the wording of Approved Document Part B, or whether Schedule 1 has to be complied with regardless of the wording of Part B, may cause a bit of legal wrangling.  I really have no idea how the lawyers will argue this, but my understanding is that the Approved Documents are not the legislation, they are guidance as to how the legislation (in this case The Building Regulations 1991) MAY be complied with.

 

I think many of us know that you can show compliance with the building regs, even by not following the guidance in the ADs, provided you provide evidence to convince a building inspector.  The big question here seems to be whether or not the a building inspector granted approval on the basis of evidence provided, rather than on the basis of the methods recommended in the AD.  I suspect not, as building control still have this project listed as "Completed, Not Approved", which suggests they may not have approved all aspects of the work yet.  Whether that includes the external insulation and cladding doesn't seem clear, but the fact that the Full Plans application was never approved, and the project seems to have switched to working under a Building Notice, makes me wonder a bit. 

 

Was that apparent switch made because the Full Plans application ran into difficulties over the way the external insulation and cladding was designed? 

 

Did the main contractor switch from using the local authority and the Full Plans submission to another building control body under a Building Notice? 

 

The information I've been able to dig out is hearsay with regard to switch to working under a Building Notice, I can't find anything definitive that states that was actually done.

[MikeSharp01]

Did anybody read this?

 

If this is true then Building standards are meaningless, NHBC may have some rather large problems and the Construction industry as a whole is going to need defibrillation.

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-40418266

 

 

[PeterW]

@MikeSharp01 that makes very sobering reading ....

[ToughButterCup]

6 hours ago, MikeSharp01 said:

[...]

NHBC may have some rather large problems and the Construction industry as a whole is going to need defibrillation.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-40418266

 

Self interest requires self control. At so many levels and so many ways in this entire affair, self censorship has failed. It is too much to ask.

The argument for independent high-standard regulation is  compelling. Time to admit we got it wrong.

[Jeremy Harris]

I hate to say this, but how long have I been banging on about inadequate building inspection standards?  This has been going on for decades, and the bigger construction companies have now got very adept at bending the system to save money.

 

I've raised it here, and on ebuild before, I know, and I even went so far as to raise it with my MP just over two years ago.  Despite me having evidence that a large development in his constituency was being built with major failures to comply with the building regulations, and asking him if he would look in to it, he insisted that the government did not want to add to the regulatory burden of industry and he was sure that the construction industry was able to police itself.  I wish I had recorded that conversation, and could play it back to him now.

 

I was concerned enough about the clear and obvious inspection failings that I asked a LABC building inspector what he thought.  His reply was that he thought that around 60% of work failed to comply with the building regulations, and that this view was shared by many of his colleagues, but that they were powerless to do anything about it.

 

 

[jamiehamy]

Funny you say that @JSHarris. I wrote to the convenor of a Scottish Parliament Committee recently following an evidence session. I'm going to follow up on this with them. 

 

"Dear Mr Doris,

 

I read with much interest the official report for Local Government and Communities Committee 03 May 2017, which you convened.

 

I’m currently building my own house (literally!), I found the session fascinating. What struck me most was just how informed the committee are and how prescient their questions were. For me, they were absolutely on the ball and I suspect your committee may be opening a can of worms that to date has been left unopened – there is a real gap here in terms of inspections (created in part by removing the clerk of works) and a rather worrying case of inherent bias in the warranty process that a number of members highlighted – although oddly denied by NHBC! The other key point highlighted is the real lack of recourse for home buyers when things go wrong – I know people who have bought new homes and experienced problems – all agreed the NHBC warranty was a waste of time as it was very difficult to get any remediation.

 

The value in terms of quality offered by the current inspection regime has been the topic of discussion directly and indirect on the Buildhub online forum for self builders – with the same issues raised on various occasions.

 

I have nothing specific to add in terms of my experiences  – whilst I have a good relationship with my BCO, I am aware that their remit is fairly limited – I would say that increasing their responsibilities for inspections should be something worthy of consideration along with whether having a dedicated Clerk of Works would add value in terms of quality and standards for projects above a certain size.  

In summary, I would say an excellent session, very good line of questioning and obvious to me that your committee members know what they are talking about. 

 

I look forward to the final report and recommendations. "

[Roger440]

15 hours ago, recoveringacademic said:

 

Self interest requires self control. At so many levels and so many ways in this entire affair, self censorship has failed. It is too much to ask.

The argument for independent high-standard regulation is  compelling. Time to admit we got it wrong.

 

The argument is sound. Quite how you would, im not sure. If you did, and they were independant, and assuming they dont adopt a "council" type approach of just making life difficult for the sake of it, house building in this country will slow right down as there simply isn't the skill and resource to make it happen. Or to find enough people of knowledge to inspect.

 

The standard of work is so poor you will have more inspectors than workers!

 

13 hours ago, JSHarris said:

I hate to say this, but how long have I been banging on about inadequate building inspection standards?  This has been going on for decades, and the bigger construction companies have now got very adept at bending the system to save money.

 

 

 

Absolutely agree.  I have had the discussion numerous times that its the next PPi waiting to happen, though i thought it would become an issue off the back of poor modern houses, and the slowly growing news on the subject. This incident just supercharged the whole issue.

 

[Temp]

I'd certainly never by a new house "off plan".

 

Best thing we can do is teach our kids how to value quality and hope it goes viral. 

[curlewhouse]

This on Celotex web site :

 

Update - Friday 23rd June

Grenfell Tower: Celotex is to stop the supply of RS5000 for use in rainscreen cladding systems in buildings over 18m tall

Celotex is shocked by the tragic events of the Grenfell Tower fire. Our thoughts are with everyone affected by this devastating human tragedy. We have been supplying building products for over forty years and as a business our focus has always been to supply safe insulation products to make better buildings. 

We want to do everything that we can to support the Government’s ongoing response to the tragedy. We continue to offer our full cooperation with the investigations.
Celotex notes the comments made by Scotland Yard at this morning’s briefing in respect of the insulation used in Grenfell Tower. In view of the focus on rainscreen cladding systems and the insulation forming part of them, Celotex believes that the right thing to do is to stop the supply of Celotex RS5000 for rainscreen cladding systems in buildings over 18m tall with immediate effect (including in respect of ongoing projects), pending further clarity.  

Celotex manufactures and supplies the insulation product RS5000 for use in multicomponent rainscreen cladding systems for buildings over 18m tall.  Safety testing was undertaken on RS5000 as part of a particular rainscreen cladding system and this is described in documents available on our website. As noted in those documents, any changes to components of the cladding system or construction methods used need to be considered by the relevant building designer. 
Given the developments of the past twenty four hours, we wish to discuss with the authorities how we can restore confidence in the products that we supply to the above 18m market. 

At this early stage, it would not be appropriate for Celotex to make any further comment at this time.

For all media enquiries please call: 07823 328444

Edited June 29, 2017 by curlewhouse

[Tennentslager]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-40453054

BBC report that the cladding was changed from zinc to aluminium to save money.

This is not news to the readers of this thread. 

Makes me wonder about the comments about the GE and how and where we get our news.

Mainstream media is increasingly behind the curve it seems. Granted that you need to have a brain to analyse and probe online content but there are some great new voices out there.

I found UlsterFry via this forum and enjoyed their satire...

[Jeremy Harris]

1 hour ago, Tennentslager said:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-40453054

BBC report that the cladding was changed from zinc to aluminium to save money.

This is not news to the readers of this thread. 

Makes me wonder about the comments about the GE and how and where we get our news.

Mainstream media is increasingly behind the curve it seems. Granted that you need to have a brain to analyse and probe online content but there are some great new voices out there.

I found UlsterFry via this forum and enjoyed their satire...

 

 

It's also still misleading, as the melting point of zinc is a lot lower than the melting point of aluminium, 419 deg C for zinc, versus 660 deg C for aluminium.  Had the composite zinc cladding been used over PIR, with the PIR providing the fuel for the fire, then the cladding skins would have failed sooner, exposing the core to the fire earlier.