How many tower blocks will be condemned?

[interestrateripoff]

Given the recent tragic events, how many of the countries tower blocks have been clad in materials which makes them a death trap?

Social housing crisis looming?

[dougless]

19 minutes ago, interestrateripoff said:

Given the recent tragic events, how many of the countries tower blocks have been clad in materials which makes them a death trap?

Social housing crisis looming?

Personally I would condemn most of them because they seem an inhuman way to live without thinking about the safety issues.  As far as a Social Housing crisis, that has been growing nicely since 1979.

[crashmonitor]

19 minutes ago, interestrateripoff said:

Given the recent tragic events, how many of the countries tower blocks have been clad in materials which makes them a death trap?

Social housing crisis looming?

The irony is that it was all about improving energy efficiency and aesthetics  for £80,000 a unit. Meanwhile you could build a social housing unit for that up north.

[winkie]

How many people living in high rise homes will now question the safety of their homes? 

What will be the cost of improving safety?

Where will those who have lost their home and all that they own now live?

Lots of questions require honest answers....... the accountability question rears its head again or lack of it.

 

[Fairyland]

35 minutes ago, crashmonitor said:

The irony is that it was all about improving energy efficiency and aesthetics  for £80,000 a unit. Meanwhile you could build a social housing unit for that up north.

They could have installed sprinklers instead.

[PropertyMania]

41 minutes ago, dougless said:

Personally I would condemn most of them because they seem an inhuman way to live without thinking about the safety issues.  As far as a Social Housing crisis, that has been growing nicely since 1979.

And yet new high rise flats in Battersea go for hundreds of thousands of pounds. It's less the high rise itself (although admittedly most 1970s council blocks were poorly built) and more the social problems of the tenants themselves who have no incentive to make their environment work (i.e. socialism) 

[pmgdawau]

1 hour ago, interestrateripoff said:

Given the recent tragic events, how many of the countries tower blocks have been clad in materials which makes them a death trap?

Social housing crisis looming?

just buy plastic building fire insurance

[Errol]

Presumably full, government mandated inspections will be taking place this week across the country on all similar size blocks.

They should be mandatory and any changes advised should be mandatory as well.

[Riedquat]

If it's the cladding and not the blocks, not many? Cladding that's been put up can be taken down again.

[Errol]

4 minutes ago, Riedquat said:

If it's the cladding and not the blocks, not many? Cladding that's been put up can be taken down again.

Other things should be mandatory - e.g. a fully operational, building-wide fire alarm system. Tests should be mandatory at least once a week.

If you really wanted safety, you could also mandate stuff like an emergency cupboard on the top floors, containing breathing masks and other emergency kit.

Edited June 15, 2017 by Errol

[Riedquat]

You can mandate whatever you like, it becomes pointless if the rules are being ignored, and the more rules there are the more likely they'll be ignored (and the more they bring the whole lot, including the sensible ones, into disrepute by catering for increasingly far-fetched situations). You don't want to stray into the equivalent of slapping 40 mph speed limits on roads because a few people have come flying off corners into trees doing 100.

Edited June 15, 2017 by Riedquat

[Nabby81]

26 minutes ago, Riedquat said:

If it's the cladding and not the blocks, not many? Cladding that's been put up can be taken down again.

In luton alot of the new build apartments or old office buildings converted to apartments have had cladding put on to make them look nicer , I wonder if they are all safe and will now be investigated 

[stuckin2up2down]

2 hours ago, dougless said:

Personally I would condemn most of them because they seem an inhuman way to live without thinking about the safety issues.  As far as a Social Housing crisis, that has been growing nicely since 1979.

How are they inhumane? Getting a council flat in K&C is like winning the lottery imo and before they "referbed" these concrete structures are as safe as any.

[Riedquat]

Just now, Nabby81 said:

In luton alot of the new build apartments or old office buildings converted to apartments have had cladding put on to make them look nicer , I wonder if they are all safe and will now be investigated 

That should certainly be investigated.

There have been suggestions (although I'm assuming it's all mostly speculation at this stage) that as built these blocks should've been safe enough, even if they didn't quite meet current regulations. The regulations at the time of building weren't "anything goes", after all. Looking nicer is important too though, although there's only so far you'll get polishing a turd whose building should've counted as an act of massive vandalism. The aesthetics of your environment makes a great difference to quality of life. In this particular example (given the starting point) I don't believe there's any reason the two have to be mutually exclusive either, they just need to be done right.

I've a feeling that the cladding is about heat insulation too as well as visible changes.

[geezer466]

2 hours ago, Fairyland said:

They could have installed sprinklers instead.

It would be cheaper to evict, knock the blocks down and tell the people to rent in the private sector.....

 

Reports that LFB had trouble with the dry risers in the building as someone had nicked parts of it.....

[Errol]

39 minutes ago, Riedquat said:

You can mandate whatever you like, it becomes pointless if the rules are being ignored,

I mean mandate it in the sense that they have a month to install whatever is required or the building gets shut down/locked up.

[newbonic]

2 hours ago, Fairyland said:

They could have installed sprinklers instead.

I was thinking about the sprinkler issue (or the absence of them in most blocks of flats). Given that many are in areas with 'challenging' social milieus, I wonder how often they would be deliberately triggered for whatever reason if they went off simply by smashing the fire alarm glass. And the cost of water damaged stuff in peoples flats afterwards. I guess they would have to be triggered from the local fire station or by a bloke in a nearby control box, or something.

[crashmonitor]

20 minutes ago, newbonic said:

I was thinking about the sprinkler issue (or the absence of them in most blocks of flats). Given that many are in areas with 'challenging' social milieus, I wonder how often they would be deliberately triggered for whatever reason if they went off simply by smashing the fire alarm glass. And the cost of water damaged stuff in peoples flats afterwards. I guess they would have to be triggered from the local fire station or by a bloke in a nearby control box, or something.

At the end of the day it was more about what they put in( insulation) than what they didn't put in. And I am amazed that 80k per unit is supposed to be cost effective in our battle against global warming. No way would a private household want or have the means to spend a fraction of that unless you are Caroline Lucas.

[newbonic]

6 minutes ago, crashmonitor said:

At the end of the day it was more about what they put in( insulation) than what they didn't put in. And I am amazed that 80k per unit is supposed to be cost effective in our battle against global warming. No way would a private household want or have the means to spend a fraction of that unless you are Caroline Lucas.

I would hazard a guess that for the fire risk working fire alarms throughout (using batteries that are useless in domestic appliances!) and the bloke in the control box would be as effective, and vastly cheaper.

[Riedquat]

6 minutes ago, crashmonitor said:

At the end of the day it was more about what they put in( insulation) than what they didn't put in. And I am amazed that 80k per unit is supposed to be cost effective in our battle against global warming. No way would a private household want or have the means to spend a fraction of that unless you are Caroline Lucas.

If you just want insulation rock wool does the job and can't catch fire.

[Errol]

2 minutes ago, Riedquat said:

If you just want insulation rock wool does the job and can't catch fire.

Even if you pass an electric current through it?

[regprentice]

Fro what i have read the issue with the cladding is that the 'environmental' benefits have been allowed to supercede the fire safety risks. Some comments made by 'fire safety experts' in the guardian yesterday indicated that the Cladding used in similar buildings was effectively flammable  but used because it offered the highest rate of insulation. Supposedly, if the metal facing had been installed properly, a fire in one of the segments of insulation could not heave spread and would have burnt out. We might end up in a situation where the materials are subsequently deemed safe if installed properly, which would be no comfort to anyone living in such a building.

I know in my experience of living in East London that its not uncommon for kids to set fire to communal bins sat at the base of buildings like this. If this type of cladding is a new thing, and is being put in place across similar buildings, then its not unlikely it could happen again. I see the FT has the following headline today 'Fire Chief calls for halt to recladding after London disaster'

[Errol]

4 minutes ago, regprentice said:

We might end up in a situation where the materials are subsequently deemed safe if installed properly, which would be no comfort to anyone living in such a building.

I think it's pretty obvious that after what has happened engineers are going to have to physically check ALL cladding in London (and elsewhere) on large buildings and then sign it off.

Just saying that they 'think' it is 'ok', or that somebody fitted it 2 yrs ago and it passed the tests back then isn't going to cut the mustard, I'm afraid.

Edited June 15, 2017 by Errol

[regprentice]

1 hour ago, newbonic said:

I was thinking about the sprinkler issue (or the absence of them in most blocks of flats). Given that many are in areas with 'challenging' social milieus, I wonder how often they would be deliberately triggered for whatever reason if they went off simply by smashing the fire alarm glass. And the cost of water damaged stuff in peoples flats afterwards. I guess they would have to be triggered from the local fire station or by a bloke in a nearby control box, or something.

I used to work in a warehouse with similar cladding, it was very challenging to get insurance for despite only being 5 years old. The insurers mandated the installation of sprinklers, however i was assured that 99% of sprinkler set offs only trigger 1 sprinkler head. you shouldn't be able to maliciously set of a sprinkler and turn on every sprinkler in the building - each sprinkler head independently detects smoke.

[tomandlu]

4 hours ago, dougless said:

Personally I would condemn most of them because they seem an inhuman way to live without thinking about the safety issues.  As far as a Social Housing crisis, that has been growing nicely since 1979.

Hi-rises themselves aren't the problem - rather the design of the estates that hold them. I shared a flat in Trellick Tower* for a few months, and the views never stopped taking my breath away.

* the design is pretty clever. The corridors that access the flats hang between floors (see below for a 5-storey example), and you open your door and either climb up or down a set of stairs into your flat. The great thing is that this means your flat spans the whole width and you have windows both sides

F = flat, C = corridor (n.b. corridors are essentially landings suspended between two floors)

F
C
F
F
C
F
F