+1 lucorave

To quote an angry black lady, yes it’s ****ing political, everything’s political. You can’t politicise it when it already is.

Or, to quote a made-up philospher,

“If some idiot politician, some power player, tries to execute politics that harm you or those you care about, TAKE IT PERSONALLY. Get angry. The machinery of justice will not serve you here – it is slow and cold, and it is theirs, hardware and soft. Only the little people suffer at the hands of justice; The creatures of power slide out from under with a wink and a grin. If you want justice, you will have to claw it from them. Make it PERSONAL. Do as much damage as you can. GET YOUR MESSAGE ACROSS. That way you stand a far better chance of being taken seriously next time. Of being considered dangerous. And make no mistake about this: Being taken seriously, being considered dangerous marks the difference, the ONLY difference in their eyes, between players and little people. Players they will make deals with. Little people they liquidate. And time and again they cream your liquidation, your displacement, your torture and brutal execution with the ultimate insult that it’s just business, it’s politics, it’s the way of the world, it’s a tough life and that IT’S NOTHING PERSONAL. Well, **** them. Make it personal.”

The question of sprinklers is a red herring.

Without the combustible cladding, it is probably certain that fire would not have spread as rapidly and to so many floors, even if lots of the windows had been open. Instead the fire would have spread slowly inside the building, and assuming a 30 minute fire resisting door to the flat where it started, there’s a good chance it would not even have broken out of that flat before the brigade arrived.

The combustible cladding was almost certainly a gamechanger. Moreover, sprinklers cannot be relied upon where there is such cladding: sprinklers will not control an external fire, and an external fire that spreads into many rooms will quickly overwhelm the sprinkler system. The sprinkler system in the hotel in Dubai that suffered a similar cladding fire ran out of water in 15 minutes, and would have been ineffective well before that (by the time it ran out of water so many heads had already been activated that they would have been delivering only trickles of water).

It is possible that a sprinkler system might have stopped the fire in Grenfell Tower in the flat where it started, but even if sprinklers had been installed, with that cladding on the building it would still be the case that there would be an unacceptable level of risk, because there would always be the danger of a fire involving the cladding, whether because it started close to an open window and spread to the cladding before a sprinkler head in the room was activated, or because it started outside the building – such as a waste bin fire – and spread to the cladding.

If sprinklers had been installed in addition to the cladding, it would still have been playing russian roulette with the lives of the residents, given the consequences of any fire that spread to the cladding.

The political fallout from and public reaction to the Grenfell Tower fire will probably mean that a political decision is taken to retrofit sprinklers in more residential building, which would be no bad thing, but the most important outcome will nevertheless probably be better/more reliable enforcement of the existing prohibition on combustible cladding and possibly – depending upon the results of fire testing – tightening the Regs to prohibit even the fire resistant versions of plastic insulation being used in cladding for high rise buildings.

Been lots of talk about leadership, or the lack of it. Theresa May could learn some lessons here

If you thought some of the press in the UK was shocking, here’s the Australian version of The S*n’s take on it 👿

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/rendezview/innocents-burnt-in-the-flames-of-green-ideology/news-story/0b24884b4c88b037ad8c21e9f0229735

Zokes, i said i wouldn’t post again until the facts were available but that article is nothing more than unsubstantiated scare-mongering.
The author and publisher are contemptible and their article will now be disseminated far and wide as truth when it is anything but; also online clickbait.
It stinks.

Twitter

To add to slowster’s comments on the effectiveness of a sprinkler system, here’s someone on twitter talking about the cost.

Skunk Anansie and Altered Carbon? :thu:

I agree, Frank. Published by Murdoch, written by Australia’s Hopkins. Pretty horrific bilge really.

Deadly pink batts? Interesting to see how some still think that this is a ‘green’ issue than more likely poorly specified materials applied to out of date legislation.

The Murdoch empire really has run its course, hopefully more people will see this now.

Deadly pink batts?

You should have seen the size of them 😆

slowster
The question of sprinklers is a red herring.

Let me utter two words that the vast majority of people, and especially any residents of the Tower will find difficult:

STATISTICS and PROBABILITY

There i’ve said it.

Here’s the real Truth, the real FACT: Events like large Tower Block fires occur so infrequently that they need to be analysed using statistical theory. You CANNOT just say “oh if sprinklers were fitted it wouldn’t happened” In order to make any such claim, because of the one-off nature of these things, that claim will need to be STATISTICALLY VALID. Unfortunately (especially if you are the one being burned to death) getting a valid answer takes time, effort, and some people who actually have taken the time to fully analyse the scenario.

Imagine a game of Russian Roulette. One live round in a six shot revolver. On AVERAGE, on the first pull of the trigger you have just a 1/6 chance of being killed, but you might be killed on that first pull. The second pull (1/5) but again, you might be killed as soon as you pull. And so on.

What you CAN’T do is take any individual events probability (or actuality) and apply it as a mean case across everything.

The issue we face, and it’s the reason for Knee Jerk reactions we see so often, is that us humans are not logical or statistical. We have a very poor grasp of probability (for example, people complained when the “random” track play feature on their media player repeated a track, failing to understand that true randomness does allow repetitive events), and when tensions and emotions are high, its far, far more satisfying to grab a pitch fork, run out side and join the mob, than it is to sit down with a calculator and actually work out what will make a REAL difference.

So, would have sprinklers made a difference in this case: Possibly.

(And had they prevented it, it still would have been incorrect to state “Sprinklers prevent ALL fires” etc)

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/jun/18/cladding-on-grenfell-tower-banned-in-uk-says-philip-hammond

Apparently that cladding is banned in the UK on buildings over 18m high.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/grenfell-tower-fire-london-dead-legal-action-campaign-fire-safety-mariem-elgwahry-nadia-choucair-a7795586.html

maxtorque – Member
…its far, far more satisfying to grab a pitch fork, run out side and join the mob, than it is to sit down with a calculator and actually work out what will make a REAL difference….

You are of course right about the facts and probabilities etc.

Unfortunately the politicians don’t really care about that, and only get perturbed when people do rush around with their pitchforks.

So I say let’s tar and feather the lot. 🙂

Slackman99 +1

The overcladding proposal for Grenfell Tower is in the BREEAM assessment for those who know what they are looking at and where to find it. Insulation specified is a FR PIR insulation board by a well known manufacturer. This is the design intent. The placement of the aluminium windows is also shown relative to the overcladding.

The fire load issue with the ACM panel (or ZCM) is an unknown. The 3 to 4mm PE core will melt under fire conditions. I’m unsure how its burns but as noted by Slowster the quantity of material is minimal. Its also encapsulated by the aluminium or zinc facings. However the PE will drip and this can cause secondary fires if it lands unfavourable. The integrity of the panel is also effected. But note that the facings have low melting points.

The composite panels mentioned in some reports are a different item. The industry is well aware of the issues particularly after the Sahib Food fire.

a government minister has today stated that the panels may not be the ones that are fire safety tested.

Maxtorque both me and another forum member work or worked in flour mills. These are without exception fitted with sprinklers you would have great difficulty getting insurance for a mill without them fitted. I suspect that for internal fires they are the best solution along with some strict passive fire safety design.
It would also appear that the preferred bidder for the refurb was dropped because the winning bid was £1.6 million cheaper. I wonder if there was a hitching post outside the site Office for all the cowboys horses!

Flour mills (and similar industries) have the issue of “dust explosions” and sprinklers combat that risk (by washing the fine dust out the atmosphere) so i’m not surprised they must be fitted.

I think there is little doubt they would have provided some mitgation in the original small fire, but until the investigation is complete, we won’t know if they could have prevented that fire spreading to the outside of the building and the cladding etc. I’m sure there will be plenty of analysis and small scale thermal tests done to establish what actually occurred and the most robust engineering solution.

maxtorque – Member

Flour mills (and similar industries) have the issue of “dust explosions” and sprinklers combat that risk (by washing the fine dust out the atmosphere) so i’m not surprised they must be fitted.

I guess I’m the other person who is still in the flour milling game? And as he said they are great for internal fires.

But if you have a dust explosion any sprinkler system is useless & unless you are talking about some old style museum flour mill I have no idea what you are talking of “fine dust in the atmosphere” any fine dust is flour and that’s what we sell so systems are designed to be under slight negative pressure to keep the flour in its intended location.

Trust me after 15 years of DSEAR studies & lots of money spent on combating the findings sprinklers are not the solution.

But if your talking propagation of fires with large amounts of combustible material pallets & paper sacks then sprinklers are great.

My grandad once blew up a Mcvities bakery 😆 Don’t ****, with flour, cos flour, will ****ing kill you

Indeed. It’s been suggested that Guy Fawkes might just have got away with his plot if he’d found a way to use flour instead of gunpowder

[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cft52h89roU[/video]

Life Imatating Art

Don’t ****, with flour, cos flour, will ****ing kill you

I remember seeing an explosion using custard powder, it was pretty impressive.

A little good news.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/grenfell-tower-fire-syria-refugees-rawan-khudair-safe-well-lost-everything-belongings-fear-dead-a7793356.html

And that is also why the conspiracy crap of the D class order and they are not being honest about the deaths is pretty harmful.

Using sugar is where it’s at chaps. Most bang for mass used. I have had personal experience of fire in a mill it’s a little exciting! The sprinkler head dealt with it. Strangely the stock in the roll hopper did not catch and this was a little understood phenomenon when I last ground wheat in anger. The milling research people had been unable to get an explosion in a hopper to happen and couldn’t explain why as conditions would appear to be perfect for it. And it’s the second bang that’s the big one!

@klunk

Absolutely incredible. 4th floor flat.. victims 70+.. Government floundering.. and they say you couldn’t? make it up. 😯

Life imitating art indeed

A speaker on the Al-Quds march this weekend (the one where Hezbollah flags complete with AK47s are allowed) said the Zionsts where responsible for fhe Grenfell tower block Fire. So there we have it, it was the Jews who dunnit.

I won’t post the link

I won’t post the link

Indeed, it’s not as if you’ve ever used evidence to back up your claims previously, so why start now?

jambalaya – Member
A speaker on the Al-Quds march this weekend (the one where Hezbollah flags complete with AK47s are allowed) said the Zionsts where responsible for fhe Grenfell tower block Fire. So there we have it, it was the Jews who dunnit.

I won’t post the linkyou’re a bawhum of a man. **** off.

As I said previously, increasingly deranged since election night.

150

😆

tbh, his game is quite obvious, it’s his usually trolling, so that he can get people to abuse him, which then allows him to press the report button and get people banned.

It’s a strange way to get yer kicks, particularly on a subject like this. each to their own i guess…

That panorama was an odd piece of journilism, he was out straight away knowing that was a huge tragedy before anyone else had reacted. Must be difficult doing your job when your heart is probably telling you to muck in with the help effort.

That poor soul flashing the torch at the top, just completely helpless. 🙁

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-40362317

Only resigned when ‘requested to do so’; was he part of the volunteer effort? What about Padget-Brown?
Shower of shit.

@Slowster –

3mm or 4mm of expanded PE foam,

Solid PE is used for the core, not expanded foam

@oldnpastit –

Apparently that cladding is banned in the UK on buildings over 18m high.

I’d be interested to see what document bans it. Doc B mentions insulation and filler materials, so it may come down to interpretation of whether the cladding panels themselves count as either of these items. Some in the industry would argue that they don’t, however BCA and CWCT guidelines recommend against its use

@pjm84 –

Its also encapsulated by the aluminium or zinc facings.

Except at the edges of the panel where the core is fully exposed

Solid PE is used for the core, not expanded foam

Thank you, that explains a lot. I could not understand how the cladding contributed so much to that fire if it was such a thin foam.

With regard to the encapsulation between inner and outer metal sheets, if the two sheets were separate and only bonded together by the polyethylene, then I suspect that the outer sheets delaminated, exposing the whole surface area of one side of the plastic to air/oxygen and to the fire. This particular hazard has been known about for polystyrene composite panels for 25+ years, and even if ACM is much more recent, it would have been clear to manufacturers, specifiers and fire safety professionals involved with ACM that they presented the same risk following the Dubai Hotel fire in 2015. The manufacturers of Reynobond PE themselves state it should not used on buildings above 10m.

I’d be interested to see what document bans it. Doc B mentions insulation and filler materials, so it may come down to interpretation of whether the cladding panels themselves count as either of these items. Some in the industry would argue that they don’t, however BCA and CWCT guidelines recommend against its use

It does look likely that the argument that the polyethylene was not insulation or filler will be used when this finally comes to court, so it might be argued that they have not breached paragraph 12.7.

It looks horribly possible, even likely, that someone involved in the specification for Grenfell Tower concluded that the polyethylene cladding would comply with ADB, either because they were not very experienced and did not have a good understanding of ADB, or worse, because they were experienced/’clever’ and saw a potential ‘loophole’ in ADB. EDIT – And seemingly others, including Building Control, either accepted this without questioning it, or worse they did not notice it.

If this were all that needed to be addressed in the proposed review of ADB, it would be fairly simple, but there are other areas where similar risks and problems likely now exist and will occur more and more with modern methods of construction making extensive use of combustible materials, so the review will need to be far more comprehensive than just considering cladding and tower blocks.

you’re a bawhum of a man

😆 😆 😆

Downing Street have just announced that there are at least 600 hi-rise buildings in the UK with the same cladding on them.

Jeez.

Downing Street have just announced that there are at least 600 hi-rise buildings in the UK with the same cladding on them.

Jeez.

tm-pm has anounced that private blocks are going to be also checked out, with the government paying the bill, there will be a lot of paper shredding and toilet roll used in next few months by those responsible, and who knew of the risks and still went ahead, and one of the firms responsible has had 2 cladding jobs put on hold, not good for the tradesmen installing the stuff as they need to be paid.

Probably quite a few companies going to go bust to either avoid the liabilities, or just cant afford to pay workers as contracts are put on hold.