Could housing be cheaper and better if we stop building so many staircases?

Re:Could housing be cheaper and better if we stop building s... by chrisseaton on Saturday December 25, 2021 @04:05AM (#29681661)

> Apartment doors, walls and floors can withstand many hours of continuous burn.

24 stories of Grenfell were engulfed in an hour - the fire bypassed the doors, walls and floors, by going up the outside.

> The building would never be on fire

The entire building was on fire. 72 people died.

> The problem with Grenfell was that building regulations had been violated, at which point, all bets about safety are off.

Mistakes get made. Hence redundancy, like two staircases. If you're going to design for 'no mistakes ever made' then don't bother with any fire systems as a fire is a mistake in the first place.

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Re:Could housing be cheaper and better if we stop building s... by sofixa on Saturday December 25, 2021 @06:21AM (#29682330)

> 24 stories of Grenfell were engulfed in an hour - the fire bypassed the doors, walls and floors, by going up the outside

Because the exterior was flammable, which isn't the norm and is actually criminal.

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Re:Could housing be cheaper and better if we stop building s... by pessimizer on Saturday December 25, 2021 @09:38AM (#29683658)

It's so not criminal that plenty of hi-rises in the UK still have flammable cladding. If it were criminal, the people who put it on there would be in prison.

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Re:Could housing be cheaper and better if we stop building s... by chrisseaton on Saturday December 25, 2021 @06:41AM (#29682457)

> is actually criminal

So is arson. Newsflash: sometimes people do criminal things.

But we try to design to cope with it rather than just saying ‘but they aren’t allowed to start that fire so no need to guard against it.’

And it turned out it was the norm, hence the huge panic to fix it in so many buildings.

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Re:Could housing be cheaper and better if we stop building s... by pas on Saturday December 25, 2021 @06:21AM (#29682328)

The correct approach is to design for the biggest common mistakes, not for all mistakes ever. We already do this for floods, earthquakes, wind load, etc.

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Re:Could housing be cheaper and better if we stop building s... by chrisseaton on Saturday December 25, 2021 @06:42AM (#29682466)

This cladding was common. They’re still trying to remove it from buildings now.

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Re:Could housing be cheaper and better if we stop building s... by pas on Saturday December 25, 2021 @07:07AM (#29682613)

Trying. Because the UK government absolutely does not give even a single fuck. Housing is a shitshow everywhere. (A symptom of completely bonkers politics in general.)

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