Grand Designs - I was wrong

Yes there are reasons other than economics as to why older Scottish houses have wee windaes and East Coast fishing villages have narrow winding streets. Wide, tree lined avenues and Mediterranean villas are fine in the right climate.

Back home in New Zealand in the southern most city of Invercargill they have these huge wide streets and when the southerly blows in from the pole they are murder. There has also been a scandal with people building mediterranean style flat roof no overhang houses in Auckland and surprise, surprise they leak when the sub tropical downpours hit. Not least because they are stud walls, not stucco on brick so the water runs down inside and rots that nice CLS framing timber.

Peter

The house is celarly no to building regs as wind pressure is specifically part of them.

Sue teh architect, and/orhe window manufacturers.

You buy windows and they fit them for you.

You ask an architect to design a place and he goes by the book which is written ultimately by the government. This country's government sent an army into Iraq after 10 years of opportunity to get ready, half arsed and half dressed following the dictates of a monkey. And a country in defeat with a civilian population of 12 million is abou to kick arse -if I may be allowed to digress.

You don't seriously suppose they have the faintest ideas of what is important do you?

The guys who set building regs, when not being leaned on by e.g. the disabled lobby, do actually know a heck of a lot about building and construction.

Its not their fault they have to engoce the deisgn of all houses on the assumption that at some stage the country will consist of disabled purblind dwarves in motorised wheelchairs. Or Daleks..?

I have juts checked the regs, and wind speed is all in there with pmaps and diagrams and how to calculate the perssure.

Wheover selected the windows is clearly in contravention of the building regulations, right or wrong.

Methinks the learned gentleman (well TNP anyway) is referring to: CP3 Chapter V: Loading, Part 2 (1972) Wind Loads, and the simplified version within Approved Docs A Structure (1992) Sections 1 & 2, particularly if it's considered to be a glass wall or glass clad structure.

Oh, and there is "BS8200(1985) Code of practice for design of non-loadbearing external vertical enclosure of buildings" as a reference cited in the building regs.

Not that I would know anything about it ;-)

Oh yes you do :)

I suspect that there is more to this event than simple ignorance or avoidance of the rules by the architect or the designers.

Thanks for the refs.

THANK YOU TOBY!!!

I am sure it was ignorance - or more likely simply failing to ask the question. "Wil te size of glass used here wisthstand teh wind loads".

If teh architect had then consulted teh tables, he would have said in an ideal workld 'can yiur windows do X lb per sq ft pressure" and got an answer in writing. If he failed to do this, its his faulyt.

If the window company said 'yes' its their fault if it doesn't.

If the architect asked, the window company said yes, and the pressure exceeded what is reckoned to be the the limit a la regs, , then its just an insurance claim on the householder. 'act of god' etc.

Its perfectly simple. The architect has a responibility to design to the regulations, and the window company has an obligation to supply materials to the spec. derived from them. If both did, then there is no fault - just an accident.

"The Natural Philosopher" wrote | I don't take a computer and internet comnnection with me to the | bog, the building site and the bed.

I was going to suggest a laptop and wifi then remembered that from previous postings you seem to live in something approaching a faraday cage :-)

Cat5 extension lead?

Colostomy bag?

Owain

No it's Saturday today....

.andy

To email, substitute .nospam with .gl

Costs a tad more than 60 quid for one book mate.

Bog off. :-)

Sometimes its useful to remember that technology is supposed to be there to help us achieve the life experience of choice, not dictate it.

Talking of Whom, the Temple He designed -and Solomon later built, was on the site of a threshing floor. These things were sited in such areas as this building was. They take advantage of equinoctual* winds to disburse the chaff. One opens all the doors and the through draught does the work.

Interestingly the proverbialist noted that calamities can occur in such situations.

On another point, a prophetic vision of a later temple idealised it with a threshing floor inside and outside. What would that have been intended for, I wonder?

Mary Hmm ... 'supposed' to be gives a lot of leeway.