These are all known factors, and engineering solutions for them exist. Not one of those items is a valid restriction.
In regards, specifically, to weight: Dry systems are common (we use one at our church), and are in fact somewhat advantageous in that they are easier to maintain. A dry system only floods when needed, and they can be designed to flood only the needed branch.
Doesn’t seem to have in this case, anyway. 
This could have happened. Here are snippets from the specification process.
Manufactures Rep to Siding Specifier
“This cladding with the Polyethylene core is fire rated when directly applied a building substrate of concrete or masonry. No air gaps allowed. With this type of a detail our product will met current fire code standards.”
Siding Specifier to Architect
“You know that new cladding with the polyethylene core will work in this situation you just need to secure it to the substrate without air gaps.”
Architect
So let’s use this new cladding on the building for the upgrade.
**Thermal –Moisture-Insulation Guy to Detailer **
You know we need an air gap to prevent moisture buildup. Can we change this outside detail and add an air gap under the cladding so the moisture will work its way out. Let’s add in that detail.
Detailer
Sure, I will get that done.
Their could be variations to the above but I think you see the point.
So now you have a product designed to work directly applied to a concrete or masonry exterior wall. In lieu of that design it is now been specified to a wood framed structure with an air gap. Now we have an extremely dangerous building no one in that chain is aware of.
I imagine there will be a series of legal actions, from corporate manslaughter through to civil claims for gross negligence.
Refurbing these structures from prior to the 1980’s is incredibly expensive, this is due to the extensive use of asbestos in the materials - this would not only for fireproofing but also for far more mundane things such as pipe lagging and asbestos putty, along with any vinyl floor tiles from that era too.
This means that you already have a very expensive project just to remove it, and that’s before you get into the cosmetic interior and exterior design.
The fact that it had uPVC windows fitted will have made this worse, because there is no way these could buy much time from an external fire in the close vicinity.
In addition, I am willing to bet that the internal fire break partition system will have been compromised - when these were originally built the council housing provided very small rooms - you could not fit much furniture in them - but they were still larger room spaces than the original slum clearance housing that the residents had moved from in the early 1970’s - what I am saying is that I am willing to bet that some of the internal divided walls were likely removed to make for larger rooms.
Family sizes have reduced in the intervening years and there is less need for 3 or 4 bedrooms, so it isn’t unusual to have social housing remodelled to have larger rooms and fewer bedrooms.
The problem of sprinklers is the potential damage from one fire logged apartment - because the run off goes into many other areas - but that’s a better option than a disastrous fire such as this. however there is a far better option these days.
Some of you will be aware of fire misting systems, these emit a very fine dense spray of water into the affected area - this interferes with the fuel/air mix and is incredibly effective - more so than sprinklers - the thing is, this can be far more readily installed because it uses so little water. You can install a reserve tank nearby, these units can be small enough to be portable(although it takes 2 people to shift them)
It would be fairly easy to install one unit per floor with its reserve water tank - the pumps do not take a great deal of power and could be supported by a battery back up with inverter.
Each of the portable units costs around £4000 apiece, a full system fit would probably be in the region of £150-£200k(this is a WAG) for that size of installation, how do I know this, well that’s exactly what we have in prisons in the new builds and we have the portable ones in the older prisons- yup - we protect our criminals better than we do the public.
Thanks to davida03891 and casdave for two very informative posts.
Davida’s hypothetical account resembles what happened in the Kansas City hotel skywalk collapse in 1981 (similar loss of life, in the hundred range).
Shouldn’t need sprinkers, etc. There have been so many fires at Grenfell - and all over the place - in the past decades, kitchen fires, electrical fires, every kind - almost all contained to that specific unit.
The issue IS cladding, but it’s also new pvc window frames (burns at 200’ I believe) + the back filling of the new windows (easily combustible).
It’s an insane cocktail.
In 2012, the cost of retrofiting a sprinkler system the tower was marked at £1100 per unit, or well under £150k for the tower. Considering the cost of damages to a unit in a fire, it’s a reasonable insurance policy, especially as it would be amortized. Also, in the face of the roughly £9 million retrofit recently conducted, that’s small pennies, even when updated to 2016 costs (reportedly about £220k). It’s fairly clear that someone did look at an active fire suppression system, and decided against it. That decision is going to come under a glaring spotlight.
If the windows are so flammable as indicated, there’s going to be blood in the aisles at the Council.
Is there any buildings in London built to North American standards, it really sounds like this building should have been demolished at first opportunity.
If a census was taken, how many more of these fire traps are going to be found in the UK
nm
Any tower built after 2007 taller than 30m must have sprinklers.
Reality Check: Why don’t all high-rises have sprinklers?
The issue is the policy on retrofitting a large number of tower blocks built before that. There has been a national programme for renovating public housing since 2000, the Decent Homes standard. It appears the building codes were not updated to take into account many of the changes in construction techniques such as external cladding. There is now a lot of attention on this and it looks like the policy was delayed by successive changes within the last few government administrations.
These towers are very common across Europe, in the post war construction boom. Most cities have them. Fire prevention assumes that the concrete box construction limits fires to individual apartments and this has been the experience over the years. I expect the situation in the US was different, since it did not experience the devastation of cities and a need to create large amounts of housing lost to bombing.
The way in which cladding was added during a renovation seems to have introduced a vulnerability to the fire spreading between floors. This, obviously, was not supposed to happen.
I expect there are urgent assessments going on by local councils up and down the country to identify any other towers that have similar cladding.
Sure, they can be valid - if the building structure can’t support the added weight without massive rebuilding, if dealing with penetration of firewalls costs more than the new sprinkler system and money is short, if there is nowhere to install pumps…
Sure, if money is not a consideration you could in theory rebuild any building with a sprinkler system but money is always a consideration. At a certain point the costs/labor/compromises become ridiculous and we say “can’t be done”.
True, the situation in the US was different. However, high-rise technology in the US came out of Chicago, which has been downright paranoid about fires since 1871 and still has some of the world’s strictest fire codes. The “contain fires” and “use lots and lots of concrete” meme has been in effect for about 150 years there, along with “multiple exits” and other features, and it has spilled over into other cities.
I’m trying to recall ANY high rise buildings in Chicago with the sort of cladding described as being used for Grenfell. Of course, Chicago also has the problem of high winds on a regular basis that have done things like pull entire windows out of high-rises, exterior cladding on high rises in Chicago has different problems than in London. But even for residential and private homes Chicago has long discouraged flammable materials which is why so much housing in Chicago has brick exteriors and you can still pick out what parts of the city didn’t burn in 1871 by the existence of homes with wooden exteriors (which are disappearing not to fire but to replacement).
Also, we didn’t try to re-wrap public housing, we’ve torn down a lot of our public housing towers and replaced them or relocated the population - which is probably easier to do in the greater Chicago area than in London for a variety of reasons.
Europe, on the other hand, not only had to rebuild housing stock after WWII but had to do it quickly, so at the time it was done compromises that got people into solid homes vs. freezing to death on the streets might have been entirely reasonable. So perhaps that is why Grenfell only had one stairwell whereas even in the lowest-cost public housing in Chicago multiple stairwells and/or fire escapes were present. Even though Grenfell was (apparently) built in the 1970’s there would be a legacy from the post-war years. Major upgrades in codes usually only take place after tragedies, unfortunately.
It is interesting to compare other countries that have experienced fires in towers caused by cladding.
http://www.thenational.ae/uae/environment/no-building-cladding-crisis-in-the-uae
Those in the industry must have been well aware of this issue, it would have been discussed at international conferences.
The big question is why building codes were not updated by the UK government.
I suspect money has something to do with it. A lot of towers may need a lot of expensive modifications.
In the US High Rises built after 1970 have been required to have sprinkler systems. And some time in the 70s or 80s All high Rises built before 1970 were required to have sprinklers added.
Consdiering that the cost of the project WAS established, I htink your quibbles are entirely disengenuous. Yes, they costed it. See up-thread. No, it was NOT outrageous - It was, in fact, small potatoes compared to the rest of the retrofit conducted in 2015-16. Indeed, I daresay the cladding weighed far more in total than the sprinker system would have. Give over.
You can’t see a difference between hanging stuff on the outside walls of a building vs. running new plumbing piping though every single flat and room? The labor costs alone for plumbing a sprinkler system would probably exceed hanging external cladding.
Much high-rise public housing in UK inner cities has been torn down over the past 20 years or so. Grenfell Tower was planned in 1967, when London was still rebuilding housing stock lost in WWII (or rather, was still clearing the slums created by the destruction of housing stock in WWII). What’s interesting about the Lancaster West council estate (where Grenfell is) is that they only put up one tower block, and surrounded it with terraced housing. Most council estates are exclusively one or the other. I suspect that’s why they never knocked down Grenfell.
I’ve seen this mentioned elsewhere. I live in Manchester in the north of England. Plenty of towerblocks here have had this cladding in recent years and they are not in the sight lines of expensive areas. Maybe it’s different up north, but as this is GQ can you back up your claim?
Originally Posted by t-bonham@scc.net
The rehab was being done to the exterior of the building because it was ugly. and was detracting from the view of rich people living in nearby expensive housing. (This public housing building was in a very expensive district of central London.) The money was being put into a rehab of the exterior because that benefited the rich neighbors who had to look at the building from their balconies, not for the benefit of the residents.
:eek:
The cladding was for thermal insulation. Tower blocks tend to have antiquated heating systems based on oil fired boilers or underfloor electric heating. These things seemed a good idea at the time, before the Oil Crisis sent fuel bill soaring and nuclear power failed to deliver the promise of electricity too cheap to meter. Today fuel poverty is a serious social issue and the Decent Homes programme is intended to address this type of housing problem and also work towards reducing CO2 emissions.
The attitude of the great and good towards these tower blocks is not what you might imagine. The nearby Trellick tower was proclaimed a fine example of the Brutalist school of architecture and awarded a Grade II preservation order. No cladding there, the residents have to endure poorly insulated apartments during the winter months in this cold country.
I suspect class prejudiced statements like this are more a reflection of the tumultuous politics of this area of London which is very divided between the seriously wealthy in the south part of the borough and the poor northern part around the tower.
This event was caused by a construction design weakness that was unintentionally introduced to this building following its renovation. It may well affect lots of tower blocks in many areas and this is the big worry. The potential repair costs could be huge. What do you do with all the people who may need to be rehoused? The UK already has a great shortage of decent housing, none more so than in London.
Every local authority has been asked to inspect towers to identify any that may have the same vulnerability to cladding fire, and when that is done, we will know the extent of the problem and be able to estimate how much it will cost to put right.
I am wondering how much it would cost to re-clad a tower block and install sprinklers?
Adding sprinklers to 60’s towers can obviously be done. Oxford City Council have recently refurbished 5 tower blocks in the city that included sprinklers and cladding. (I actually saw an interview with one of the residents saying they had objected to the fitting of sprinklers as the heads were unsightly and fitting was disruptive - now very glad council ignored residents complaints!)
Immediately after the fire the council wrote to the residents assuring them there refurbishment was safe. Though I see on re-reading the message they say the cladding is “fire retardant”. This does not mean it does not have a polyethylene core as, according to the manufacturers, aluminium clad polyethylene IS fire retardant.
As I understand it, it’s done for insulation and other weatherproofing. These buildings often had very poor, damp/wet and unhealthy conditions until the refurbishment - I believe it’s more a case of making them over cheaply (that is, cheaper than rebuilding) to try to make it at least reasonable to send council tenants in there to live.
There’s a place near me that just got a facelift/makeover - in fact, here’s a streetview picture of it when it was halfway done.
Here’s an article describing the rationale for this particular makeover. Of course, aesthetics are part of it. In this case, energy efficiency too, but largely, it’s because it was an awful place to live in, and councils that make people live in awful places get bad press.