Battery Fires
- Thread starter saneagle
- Start date
If I understand correctly, Raynobond PE was used in cassette form in Grenfell Tower. That product wasn't certified. Raynobond PE in rivet form received class B certification in France. The architects and builders should have use rivet form instead of cassette form. So whose fault was it?
For fks sake!
Maggie Maggie Maggie!
Are you for real?
Since she left office in 1990, we had the Major government, then thirteen years of Labour with Blair and Brown and then a coalition Con / Lib government and then, Cameron.
The idea that this disaster would not have happened had not Thatcher made a speech way back when and nobody else who was in power for decades after that could have seen the issue if it was obvious is absolutely mad - oh - and pretty stupid too.
THEY ALL FAILED, but in particular they were ALL deceived by well paid people whose job it was to bring expertise to the issue of building safet.
These were obviously.
- Civil Service experts in safety who were responsible for building regulations - people like Brian Martin who famously asked, "where are the bodies?" when the fire risk was brought to his attention after more than one terrible tall building fire abroad.
- The Building Research Executive, whose responsibility was to test and certify the safety of materials and methods of construction. They had tested and found the material a fire risk. It failed their tests. They did nothing.
- Manufacturers of the cladding who KNEW it was dangerous, but not only hid that fact, they discussed the impact on their sales figures of the knowledge they had if it ever got out.
We have had a failures at every turn, but you think Thatcher who was out of office 26 years before the disaster was the problem..... REALLY????
I don't know the answer to that, nor did I know the information you just presented. As a layman - I would say we depend on building regulations and product certification. Architects and builders must follow those, and after and during erection, building inspectors come to see how the job is being done. On paper the system ought to be foolproof, but as always, that depends upon the people who certify safety of product and methods and the people who write and apply the regulations through inspection to be doing their jobs. There seems - especially in the case of the BRE and Martin at the civil service end, to have been an appalling failure in their duty. It is almost criminal negligence - probably actual criminal negligence and possibly misconduct in public office for Martin.If I understand correctly, Raynobond PE was used in cassette form in Grenfell Tower. That product wasn't certified. Raynobond PE in rivet form received class B certification in France. The architects and builders should have use rivet form instead of cassette form. So whose fault was it?
Politicians generally know nothing about any of this stuff. They utterly depend on the people who advise them to tell the truth and be vigilant and diligent about what they advise and allow when they have regulatory functions.
It's not the case that the architects and contractors do not know what they are buying.
it's usually the cost cutting motivation that encourages people to choose inferior products while keeping their fingers crossed that disaster will not strike.
If I understand correctly, Raynobond PE was used in cassette form in Grenfell Tower. That product wasn't certified. Raynobond PE in rivet form received class B certification in France. The architects and builders should have use rivet form instead of cassette form. So whose fault was it?
How the products used in Grenfell Tower’s cladding system were tested and sold
Get the latest in-depth insight and analysis for UK social housing professionals, including a diverse range of topics and a strong campaign voice.
read that article and follow the hyperlinks- its a very interesting and horrifying story
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It was actually Harold Wilson's fault. His government had the chance to fix the regulations for building materials, but he chose not to prioritise it. Instead of fixing stuff, he was only concerned about workers rights and disrupting the economy. He introduced The Rent Act 1965 which made it virtually impossible for landlords to make money from and improvements to their properties, and he was the sitting PM when grenfell was built. He should have forseen the problems, but he was too busy with other waste of time stuff instead of thinking about how he could save lives.
There was no problem with Grenfell when it was built (or the regulations when Grenfell was built - they were very clear and prescriptive). It was the renovation - specifically the cladding panels and insulation that caused the problem and the regulatory regime in place
Two things: HW could have introduced regulations on cladding when he had the chance; secondly, he could have ordered that buildings like that should have been built so that they didn't need cladding half-way through their life. It's definitely his fault. As I said, he was too busy worrying about political agendas rather than saving lives.
I did.How the products used in Grenfell Tower’s cladding system were tested and sold
Get the latest in-depth insight and analysis for UK social housing professionals, including a diverse range of topics and a strong campaign voice.www.insidehousing.co.uk
read that article and follow the hyperlinks- its a very interesting and horrifying story
It's the same as buying the cheapest battery and charger and keeping your fingers crossed.
They forgot to mention that it was Harold Wilson's fault. They blamed everybody except him.
I spent a couple of hours listening to this Kate Lamble series on BBC Sounds.
I don't think it is possible to point to a single culprit. There are multiple points of failure and outright campaigns of fraud and dishonesty among suppliers. Even the fire service - perhaps the least culpable, were not prepared for risks their senior officers knew about. Ordinary fire fighters were not prepared for what they faced and gave the wrong advice in the early stages to residents about staying put.
Most reprehensible of all perhaps were the companies who knowingly made and sold dangerous cladding and insulation panels.
Arconix
Cellotex
Kingspan
All of them were very busily marketing plastic based products which they knew failed fire tests in applications involving tall buildings.
Both management and the low level operatives who sold the material KNEW these materials should not be applied to tall buildings and they continued to sell them aggressively. They talked about the risks in emails, and some actively faked fire tests to hide the rapid and dangerous spread of combustion by employing fire poof strata in the construction of the test models. They hid this fact and passed tests, but disguised what they had done to gain certification. The fire proof layer was not part of the way this material was used in buildings.
Younger and lower level staff were intimidated by management when they brought up concerns about the ethics of selling these materials.
Individuals in the Civil Service responsible for building regulations were aware that Raynobond failed fire tests and that the material was dangerous in tall buildings. There had been fires abroad which had shown that buildings clad in aluminium sandwiched polyethylene could burn catastrophically. The risks were discussed in the department responsible for building regulation and the man specifically responsible for regulations, said , "Show me the bodies" in response to warnings after the Dubai fire. His name is Brian Martin. He had started as a time served building worker, became a site manager, and moved into materials certification at the BRE. Later he moved into the civil service as an experienced building material and construction adviser on building regulations.
The Building Research Executive - an organisation contracted by government to perform tests and certifcation of building materials, had to curtail fire tests on Raynobond cassets, because the ferocity and spread of the fire during the tests was endangering the lab where the testing occurred. They did not inform government or the bodies responsible for building regulations.
The local authority company responsible for refurbishing Grenfell Tower, the council landlord, and its tenant management arm, were not competent to manage the process of refurbishment that they undertook. They hired a firm of architects which had never before managed a project of this kind, or scale and were inexperienced in tower block buildings. They failed to check regulations properly and had selected cheaper cladding rather than fire proof cladding, in order to save money in the refurbishment.
This disaster could have been prevented at many points by many individuals, organisations and manufacturing companies. It might be true that any one of these could have circumvented the causes of the disaster, even down to the level of fire service advice to residents and the fire fighters who were called once the fire started. They advised residents to stay in their flats in the mistaken belief that flats were compartmentalised and fire safe. Later, this advice, described as an article of faith in the fire service was changed as the building was engulfed in fire.
What a massive mess.
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Would you use that stuff to insulate your house?
Honestly, if the contractors don't know what PE stands for, they shouldn't be in business. And if they and the owner don't ask for the certification, then ask yourself why. It's not that difficult to guess.
It's not like they don't have the choice or some supplier falsifies test certificates. Rockwool for example, is incombustible, every supplier has the stuff.
Next to my shop is the university residence. I watched the builders put on the original cladding some 10 years ago and replace all the original cladding with new cladding in the last year. I can see clearly how funnels can form and I am not a builder.
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All true but these guys marketing insulation and cladding had faked certification tests.
Raynobond made by Arconix, had passed tests for flat Raynobond, but failed the cassette application tests where the material was bent around into a sort of very shallow box. They used the certification for the flat application when marketing it for cassette applications. When the Raynobond later failed also in the flat application, they continued to use the old certification from when it had passed.
I think it was Cellotex insulation where the fire safety test was faked up by building a rig which involved an entirely separate membrane of some sort of magnesium barrier which was hidden from buyers.
How do procurement departments, architects and builders, unravel outright fraud and misrepresentation such as this?
EDIT:
I think draconian penalties for individuals and corporate entities who have engaged in these deceptive acts should be imposed. Only then will the incentive to defraud and pass off as safe material they know to be dangerous will be removed. This is problematic since these were foreign manufacturers, but some had Uk sales departments.
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Read this article if you are interested in the causes of the Grenfell fire.
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www.theguardian.com
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you can read the criticism of the fabricator.
They make the cassettes.
Harley Facades: The role of the cladding subcontractor in Grenfell fire | Construction News
it's like you go to B&Q and ask their sales assistant which panel you should buy then give it to your builder to clad your house with.
The chain of contractors is explained in this briefing document:
CEP00064253_CEP Opening Statement for Phase 2 Module 1 - 20 December 2019.DOCX.pdf (prodgti.s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com)
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