Grenfell Tower block disaster

[BlueAnorak]

Actually in a lot of buildings it could be.

I was watching the news the other day and they said three or four floors in this building were not occupied, set aside, which usually means for plantrooms, heating, chilled water, gas etc. It would be easy to install sprinkler systems to this type of building.

For buildings with full occupancy, I guess it would have to entail vacating certain flats, or even whole floors to install these systems.

Also, booster pumps can be fitted to each floor for sprinkler systems, although you would probably have to have many inlets into the building so they can run off different circuits, much like back-up systems for electrical circuits.

I seriously doubt if any existing UK high rise building could take the weight of retrofitted water tanks to deliver enough water to allow people to escape. 1 cubic foot of water weighs 62.43 lbs. A small bedroom 10 x 20 x 8 = 1600 cubic feet = 101.488 lbs or 45.8 metric tonnes. Each flat wiuld be at least 11 times that with about 20 flats per floor is would be 10.076 tonnes.
Now I know sprinklers only operate in areas where one of the bulbs breaks but to deliver better fire protection than what "passive" delivers they would have to operate in a large chunk of the building.

 

[BlueAnorak]

Someone posted earlier in this thread that the more expensive, less flammable cladding had been rejected in favour of the less expensive, more flammable one. The more expensive one costing a whole £2 a metre more than the cheaper one that was chosen. I wonder who went for the cheaper option, the contactor or the owners.

The less flammable polyurethane cladding would still have burnt. More slowly perhaps but it would still have burnt - though more lives may have been saved
Cladding must be fire proof (e.g. rock wool as per the blocks of flats in West Bromwich). How building regs didn't mandate this is simply beyond me.

 

[BlueAnorak]

There was a letter in the DT from a former district inspector - a role we seem no longer to have - and he was saying that they considered two things when buildings were being erected: first, it mustn't fall down, and second, it mustn't catch fire. After those two they were told to use 'their common sense'! I wonder where in the deep recesses of common sense lies the notion that if there's a fire you stay in your flat!

Done away with in 2006 - in favour of self assesment and paper based assesment reviews.
High density populated buildings need inspecting during construction or modification!
IMO, this - along with deficent building regs -more than anything resulted in the lives lost at Grenfel Tower.

 

[gordondaviesmoustache]

Say what you will about the Yanks and their society being in thrall to rapacious capitalism, but on certain public policy issues, such as building codes, they are strict as fuck. Far stricter than us I'll wager.

 

[BlueAnorak]

It assumes the fire service will get there promptly and put the fire out (a political issue with cuts meaning response times are slower).

It means you haven't got hundreds of people going down stairwells with firefighters trying to go up.

If they stay put they will keep the door shut. If they leave some will leave doors open.

Someone did say they'd seen flames outside and opened the window to get a better look!

It's one of those conundrums. Risk of injury and even panic if everyone leaves and, inevitably smoke in the stairwell when the firefighters enter the flat with the fire. Stay put may (on the statistical balance of risk) still be best advice.

Having two stairwells may revert to the norm - I think it only changed because, it seems awful to say, buildings became more fire resistant.

Stairwells should be protected by two doors with a small landing inbetween. Stairwells on high rise buikdings need to be protected by fire curtains behind the outer door that are deployed when evacuation is required. This would stop most of the smoke getting into stairwells.

 

[bluethrunthru]

Say what you will about the Yanks and their society being in thrall to rapacious capitalism, but on certain public policy issues, such as building codes, they are strict as fuck. Far stricter than us I'll wager.

Probably born out of the fear of real action as a consequence of failure with such a litigious society and also law makers that act quite swiftly compared with ours - no kicking stuff off into the long grass for 6 or 7 years whilst an enquiry deliberates and reports

 

[goalmole]

The less flammable polyurethane cladding would still have burnt. More slowly perhaps but it would still have burnt - though more lives may have been saved
Cladding must be fire proof (e.g. rock wool as per the blocks of flats in West Bromwich). How building regs didn't mandate this is simply beyond me.

It's what happens when money is your god and people don't matter anymore.

 

[gordondaviesmoustache]

Probably born out of the fear of real action as a consequence of failure with such a litigious society and also law makers that act quite swiftly compared with ours - no kicking stuff off into the long grass for 6 or 7 years whilst an enquiry deliberates and reports

Good points. It's the same in relation to financial fraud within institutions. They are much less hesitant to slap the cuffs on white collar criminals within the banking system, for example. IIRC, not a single person in the U.K. was prosecuted in association with the credit crunch, which is staggering, as fraud was being committed on an industrial scale imo.

 

[BlueAnorak]

I've not read every page but is the "gap created a chimney effect" now discernibly true or just repeated because the talking head mentioned that it can happen during the early morning coverage?

This one is true. The cladding burns/melts away leaving a gap between the outer aluminium and the wall. Once a gap is present between one window opening and the one above it it acts as a chimney and heat and flame is sucked up to the next floor. Eventually the aluminium forming the outter cover of the melts and burns creating massively high temperatures at the bottom of the chimney. The whole of the building cladding for 6 or 7 floors would probably have been alight in 20 mins.
http://www.chimneys.com/articles/how-chimneys-work-draft

 

[BlueAnorak]

I watched Charlie Stayt BBC News go to town on the MP Sajid Javid yesterday, he went Paxman on him I was impressed. We need more of them.

I thought Javid, my MP put up quite a good response. Not that I voted for him, but pretty impressive nonetheless. He actually tried to answer questuons begore being interupted.