Christopher Booker, The Sunday Telegraph
When, amid all the millions of words uttered about Grenfell, are we finally going to focus on the real cause of that fire? A comment on my column last week said that “only Booker could get a link between Grenfell, the EU and global warming into a single article”. But that is precisely the point. Without those two factors, the fire could never have happened.
As I had written, all this talk about “cladding” has been looking in wholly the wrong direction. The cause of the conflagration was less to do with the “rainscreen” cladding: it was the combination of 6in of combustible Celotex insulation foam behind it with a void creating a “chimney” effect, sending the flames roaring up the building.
In 1989, after a fire in an 11-storey block in Knowsley, the Building Research Establishment was asked to devise a means that could have prevented it.
It found that this should be a new “whole system test” covering all the materials used on the outside of buildings to see how they interacted when installed together.
But in 1994 the European Commission called for a new EU-wide fire test which was exactly what the BRE had found so inadequate with existing practice: a “single burn” test applied only to each material separately.
But after 2000, when a Commons committee investigated a high-rise fire in Scotland, MPs recommended that the BRE’s “whole system test” should be adopted as the British standard, BS8414.
By 2002, however, the EU had adopted its inadequate test, incorporating it in a European standard using EN 13501. Under EU law, this became mandatory, leaving the UK’s BS 8414 as only a voluntary option.
The EU had also become obsessed with the need for better insulation of buildings to combat global warming, which became its only priority. All that mattered was the “thermal efficiency” of materials used for insulation, for which none was to prove better than the polyisocyanurate used in Celotex, the plastic chosen in 2014 for Grenfell.
Fire experts across Europe have pointed out that the lack of a proper whole system test was ignoring the risk of insulation fires, not least in Germany, where there have been more than 100.
Strangely, the maker of Celotex has stated on its website that the material used in Grenfell has been tested by the BRE as meeting fire safety requirements. But the BRE has tartly responded that this test referred to a different installation; and that “Celotex should not be claiming that their insulation product can be used generically in any other cladding system”.
Had the Grenfell installation been properly tested under BS 8414 it would not have met the standard, and thus the fire could not have happened. The ultimate irony is that China and Dubai are now adopting mandatory systems based on BS 8414. They can do this because they are not in the EU. But, because Britain is still in the EU, it cannot legally enforce the very standard which would have prevented that disaster.
Full post
HT/The GWPF
Stepping back from all the minutiae of EU and other regulations, my take on this is that the motivation for the cladding on Grenfell was snobbery of Kensington residents reinforced by the the mood music of global warming alarmism. The majority of elite snobs are strong AGW believers also.
North Kensington residents are council tenants on benefits mostly and hardly elite snobs.
Don’t tell David Cameron! His home is just North of Westway, barely 400 yds from the tower. There are some other plush homes about too – it’s very close to the old BBC Television Centre.
This is a popular if bizarre idea. Of course the local ‘snobs’, like the new Labour MP, are fans of ‘Brutalism’ and admire the work of Goldfinger etc. Goldfinger’s Trellick Tower is Grade II* listed. They would be horrified by the idea of cladding that but are fine with cladding a bit of sub-Brutalism by some architect nobody remembers (Clifford Wearden and Associates).
http://www.themodernhouse.com/past-sales/trellick-tower-london-w10-3/
From her personal website;
http://www.emmadentcoad.co.uk/
ABSTRACT OF PAPER FOR ICOMOS CONFERENCE IN MADRID, JUNE 2011
Erno Goldfinger’s Trellick Tower in the north of Kensington and Chelsea is a Council owned listed building in social tenancy that is facing problems of funding conservation and maintenance programmes. One of many ‘solutions’ to this has been a suggestion to sell the building to a private developer; this is being heavily resisted by residents and local Councillors alike. New approaches need to be found. This paper reviews the debates and controversies surrounding this scheme under the headings of SOFT – HARD – and PLASTIC. Beginning with issues of the conservation and reinstatement of social purpose, meaning and identity, and how these can both complicate and clarify motivating forces, the paper then turns to the physical and material conservation issues that define it, and finally the need for ongoing efficient management and financial stability, without which the building could again fall into disrepair.
Notwithstanding the accusations by the Marxist/Stalinist shadow chancellor the blame for the deaths lies not with the Conservatives but squarely with the green and fellow global warming left wing activists who not content with shutting down coal mines, insisted that heat loss from high rise social housing buildings et al should be reduced from 0 to 0.00 Watts/m^2 by adding superfluous expensive external cladding so reducing CO2 emissions from 0 to 0.00 ppm.
As much as I dislike the Green lobby it is a bit of a stretch to blame them for this any more than it is to blame Mrs May.
In the big society where we are ‘all responsible’ it really means that no-one is responsible.
Maybe the UK had the right enforce the higher BS standard than the minimium EU one. Maybe they didnt.
Regulations are necessary of course but there is absolutely no point in Regulations if no-one takes responsibility for enforcing them.
It’s like having a speed limit on the motorway but never stopping anyone or writing a ticket. Pointless.
For hundreds of years there has been one professional person responsible to clients. A person independent of Greedy Contractor Ltd. and a person with professional qualifiacation and professional indemnity responsible for signing off the work to the client. That person was called The Architect.
Nowadays we have Design + Build, PFI, Preferred Bidders, Contractor Consortia . . . etc etc There is still an Architect doing the drawings but now he works for the Contractor and dances to the Contractor’s tune. No liability to the client or end-user. Modern Contractor’s cut their own corners and mark their own homework.
I should explain that the EU’s CDM Regulations are actually a bigger culprit here than the cladding rules.
The CDM Regulations (revised in 2015) insist on a Principal Designer being responsible but only up to Construction Phase. After that, the EU think that the Contractor can be wholly responsible. It is quite insane.
We urgently need to bring back the independent Architect and Clerk of Works being responsible until Completion (you can google ‘Clerk of Works’ if you are under 50).
You cannot buy 2 packets of aspirin in TESCO without the till going beep and stopping you and yet : –
Qualifactions required to design a student residence tower block = NONE
Qualifactions required to lodge Planning Permission = NONE
Qualifactions required to lodge Building Warrant = NONE
Qualifactions required to construct said student tower block = NONE
It should be mandatory that all non-domestic buildings be designed supervised and signed-off by qualified indemnified Architect’s.
This nonsense of profit-driven, Surveyor-led Construction Consortia running the industry has to stop.
Very informative. Definite conflicts of interest built into the system.
As much as you may dislike the idea, the green lobby are responsible for the dead people in the Grenfell Tower inferno. They are responsible for the imposed energy saving measures which were not required – ask any engineer or scientist with a knowledge of heat transfer by convection,conduction and radiation.
Absolutely. It’s highly unlikely that the insulation had any economic justification at all.
As much as you may dislike the idea, the green lobby are responsible for the dead people in the Grenfell Tower inferno. They are responsible for the imposed energy saving measures which were not required – ask any engineer or scientist with a knowledge of heat transfer by convection,conduction and radiation.
Reply
Not true. Whilst the green lobby are wrong in their motivation, it is possible to meet their pointless target safely with a fire-resistant cladding and a fire resistant insulation behind.
If insulation such as Foamglas (ultimate or even first choice in Petrochemicals Ind) or any energy saving measure is neither required nor necessary then don’t install it.
russellseitz that is not correct. PIR is slightly safer than PUR or EPS but it still burns like crazy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cAZwIBZNb6A Even rockwool or glassfibre isnt 100% as the resin binder will spontaneously combust at high enough temperature. The only safe solution is foamglass.
+1 Howard. Russell, I suggest you speak with a fire crew who have attended fires in buildings made of this stuff. The microns thickness layer of plastic coating atop the aluminium wasn’t the main reason for the fire spreading in such a rapid manner, even though it would also burn and contribute to it.
Correct.
Also note the prodigious quantities of Hydrogen Cyanide gas given off when Celotex or similar is exposed to flame / intense heat. It is highly likely many of the fatalities were caused by Hydrogen Cyanide poisoning.
If all of the additional buildings examined (60 as of a week ago) use exactly the same insulation, it’s unlikely that the main fault lies with the local contractor or local council.
(But is it exactly the same, or were fire breaks installed between panels elsewhere, or was a more fire-resistant and slightly more expensive type of panel used? These under-discussed matters may have a great bearing on placing the blame.)
Roger Knights – The other buildings use the same cladding (reynobond or alucobond) sandwich panel with the PE core but not necessarily the same insulation board behind. In pictures I have seen of other towers having panels removed the insulation behind was clearly branded Kingspan Kooltherm K7 phenolic board which has considerably better fire properties than PIR. The insulation visible on Grenfell pre-fire was UNBRANDED panels of who knows what from who knows where. I saw three colours of core, green mid and pale yellow so it looks like it was procured from different sources. The fire barriers were there but useless if there is a cavity at the collumn boxing detail acting as a ‘chimney’. Bottom line is that each project is unique and needs a qualified indemnified professional in charge from start to finish. Of course the councils and contractors aren’t responsible . . . . . . that’s the point.
The great building stress test:
Grenfell Tower vs World Trade Centre 7
There seems to be a bit of mis information going on here.
EU standards override UK standards. They even use the same numbering system:
“BS EN 13501-1:2007+A1:2009 Fire classification of construction products and building elements. Classification using test data from reaction to fire tests”
The EN 13501 standard that people here mention, just swap the EN to BS and you have the British standard.
Why?
From BS EN 13501-1:2007+A1:2009: it states on page 5:
“This European standard shall be given the status of a national standard, either by publication of an identical text or by endorsement, at the latest by December 2016, and conflicting national standards shall be withdrawn at the latest by December 2016.”
To say the EU has no responsibility in this is not totally true.
However, I suspect many people who advise the EU standards committees also advise the UK committees.
Trying to get 28 countries to agree is always a problem.
EN 13501 etc state that cladding should be tested ‘as if it were installed’ not as a separate item.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-40571856
The sound of a very large penny dropping . . . . .
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