Just heard on the radio Scotland 2pm news that the Scottish building standards are to be amended to require two escape stairs from all new tower blocks of flats and requirements for cladding to be revised...Oh and fire alarms to be made mandatory interlinked for the whole building not just smoke detectors in each flat.....seems a bit unnecessary in the near of Scotland to me but there you go ...you English punters could be doing with it though .......
In Grenfell, the single escape route help up OK. Except that it filled with smoke and poisonous fumes. Would an additional one have been any better?
It needed smoke extractors and vents and people not being told to stay in their flats.
Many of the blocks of flats around here have had smoke extractors and vents for years and they have two lots of stairs too.
London just does things on the cheap, like spending £1bn on a disposable stadium.
What drivel.
Escape stairs need pressurisation, not ventilation.
Few residential towers have two stairs as the regs don't require them. Developers all over the UK, not just London don't put them in ... why would they give up valuable floor space for extra stairs?
And how is "£1bn" for a "disposable stadium" cheap?
What drivel rod.
Who said which way the fans work?
Well they do around here.
Ask Boris.
I was watching the BBC parliament channel at about 4:30 PM today when one of the select committees? was reviewing building control changes re combustible materials on high-rise and other materials.
A Doctor xxx Evans made some interesting comments. Apparently the fire retardent applied to many items of furniture and construction just makes the amount of toxic fumes emitted worse than the fire it 'prevented' (at least I think that's what he said).
Actually it was quite interesting (for me)
Originally broadcast on July 8th so I will see if I can watch the whole program on iPlayer.
no.....
in the past I have insisted on smoke extraction to escape stairs and protected lobbies where the balcony alternative escape route to the stair enclosure was removed due to over cladding .........never been tested though .....hope it never will
very true in most cases .....
It was, when the building had metal windows and wasn't wrapped with solidified petrol.
Daily caretaker inspections followed by eviction for the non-compliants. But Grenfell residents were complaining loudly about fire safety before the tragedy.
Owain
The idea is that firefighters in breathing app can go *up* the smokey stair to the fire area, and evacuees can come *down* the clear stair to the exit.
Otherwise firefighters and hoses get tangled up with evacuees.
Owain
It's still allowed to build 8-storey student flats without sprinklers though
I wonder if it depends upon the extent of the fire though?
If a settee is totally burned up by a fire in the room that hasn't started in the settee, then the retardants probably do add significant toxic fumes, whereas if the retardants prevent a fire starting and spreading from the settee, they'll have prevented a lot of fumes.
I think I'll have a look for that too.
SteveW
So when some drunken Scot gets home and burns his toast the whole tower block is woken up? I can see this only happening once before people start disabling the alarms - with a hammer.
Those clever people in England have thought of that:
indeed ....
For fire and radiation systems, we use multiple detectors and a cntral control. A detector being triggered gives a local alarm only. Multiple detectors give a whole building alarm.
SteveW
It will be repeated tomorrow (sunday) morning at about 03:00 AM, if you have a PVR, but doesn't seem to be on iPlayer
Sprinklers and students. What could possibly go wrong ?.
BT used to have their own Fire Alarm standard which they imposed on top of BS5839.
For buildings where 999 exchange operators and other important people worked, the sounders would initially sound an alert tone if any call point or sensor was triggered.
only when the on-site fire-marshall decided that evacuation was necessary would he manually change the sounder tone to the evacuate signal.
Only works if the building occupants are trained to know how to respond.
when the new Croydon library opened in about 1995, they tested the fire alarms to see how long it took the users to leave. when the 2-tone sounders started wailing, no-one did a thing because they didn't know what it meant. At the time most people still expected to hear a ringing bell to indicate a fire.
HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.