Hotpoint FF175BP
That’s what started the fire. The next thing we’d like to know is, is this model one of the standard ones that just happened to blow up? Or is it one of those more explodey green ones?
Hotpoint FF175BP
That’s what started the fire. The next thing we’d like to know is, is this model one of the standard ones that just happened to blow up? Or is it one of those more explodey green ones?
Well, it’s Class A+ for energy and compliant with Directive 1060/2010/EU….
I did try and get some technical specs for this fridge yesterday to no avail.
Appliances online and Amazon are both showing gthis particular model as our of stock.
I have an FF187BP in the garage that doesn’t work and which I use as just a cool box. Fingers crossed it shares the same compressor, then its brand new fridge for Magnus!!
…or possible a brand new garage! 😉
If it blows and burns your house down you can get moved to Buckingham palace where you can piss and moan that you don’t get to share a bed with the Queen.
@Henry Crun
Out of stock as it’s an old model no longer in production.
Given that and that the fire brigade say they put out the fire in the flat and were moving out without noticing things were worse means it likely wasn’t anything more than a spurious issue (of the fridge or the owner dropping flammable crap behind it). The fact that the outside of the building was a candle was the main issue, something would have eventually done it to this or another building. How the fire got from a fridge inside the flat to the outside cladding is probably the more interesting question (along with how the fuck flammable shit can get stuck up the outside of a tower block).
I’m ok, I’ve got a Samsung fridge.
. . .
. .
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/applause for PJF 😀
The fridge may have started the fire, but we have clear statements from the residents who escaped that the kitchen and front doors of the burning flat were left open.
Don’t want to blame the chap who did it – no-one was given adequate information on that front – but that’s wholly and solely why this turned into the tragedy it did. When leaving your burning residence, please, please close the fire doors behind you.
The reason the cladding caught the way it did was the draught through the flat, by the way. Again, front door closed, everyone would have survived.
Like I said, you can’t blame the residents, who were never given any education on what to do in the event of a fire. But you can ask why it was that they weren’t, especially given that their building required non-standard behaviour.
Front doors to flats are half-hour fire-resisting self-closing by law. They won’t stand open unless you remove the closer. These and the 2-hour fire-resisting stair core should have allowed everyone to escape without difficulty. I look forward to seeing the results of the inquest.
I dare say the kitchen window was open too: a warm evening, perhaps? That’s one obvious route for the fire to get out and attack the cladding.
As for teaching people to close the door: yes, but don’t expect the lesson always to “take”. By one account the fellow took time to pack luggage before he alerted his neighbour. Must we instruct people to act in a timely way? Can we really need to instruct them not to dump rubbish on the stairs? There may be cultural and intellectual barriers here.
“The fact that the outside of the building was a candle was the main issue”: quite right. Now that we learn that this Guy Fawkes technology has been used by many other councils can I be confident that the Beeb will tell me which are Labour councils? Can I?
My Tel this morning carries a story about NHS hospitals and “other public buildings” also being so afflicted. Socialism is now taking an indirect route to killing the people, it would seem.
” I look forward to seeing the results of the inquest.”
You can bet your bottom dollar that there will be no criticism of any actions of the residents that might have caused the fire to be worse that it otherwise might have been. If any such behaviour happened it will be very quickly swept under the carpet.
A small point. You don’t need to close a fire (check) door. They close themselves to the point where the latch engages in the frame. Doings so is one of the features make it a fire (check) door. And in a multi-occupancy structure, all habitable rooms must be fitted with self closing fire-check doors. As must the dwelling entrance.
So there should have been, at minimum, one fire-check door between the room said to have housed the original fire.
Of course that doesn’t mean the self closers were operational. No doubt many of them were defeated by occupants wedging them open or damaging or.
removing closer elements. Because people are fucking idiots.
A small point. You don’t need to close a fire (check) door. They close themselves to the point where the latch engages in the frame. Doings so is one of the features make it a fire (check) door. And in a multi-occupancy structure, all habitable rooms must be fitted with self closing fire-check doors. As must the dwelling entrance.
So there should have been, at minimum, one fire-check door between the room said to have housed the original fire& the common areas.
Of course that doesn’t mean the self closers were operational. No doubt many of them were defeated by occupants wedging them open or damaging or.
removing closer elements. Because people are fucking idiots.
Is that “fire check door” the outer door to the flat and with a typical yale type key?
Where you pop your head out of the door for two seconds, turn round and think “shit, have I got my key” as it automatically slams shut in your face…
Presumably not that kind of key system on a slam shut (if one doesn’t want people to interfere with the mechanism)? OK on the (secure) entrance to the block, but not your own flat?
‘flammable’:- Liable to catch fire.
My loft has wooden rafters. My internal doors and my skirting boards are made of wood. Wood is flammable.
Buildings have lots of flammable material in them. Doesn’t mean they are doomed to burn down, doesn’t mean everyone should be moved to new digs in penthouse flats in Kensington.
It seems clear that there was a problem with the construction of the outside cladding but the lone fact that some of it was ‘flammable’ wouldn’t mean the tragedy was inevitable.
As pointed out earlier in this thread, if you can shut all doors/windows on the way out of a flat/house where a fire breaks out you invariably contain it.
Tragedies rarely have one single cause, although stupidity is a frequent inclusion in the list.
BiS “Of course that doesn’t mean the self closers were operational. No doubt many of them were defeated by occupants wedging them open or damaging or removing closer elements. Because people are fucking idiots.”
In a number of offices I have worked in, fire extinguishers were the preferred item used to prop open fire doors.
PF,
on all the ones I have been in you need a key to lock/unlock the door from the outside, inside it has a thumbwheel mechanism.
When our doors were replaced the surveyor insisted that they should have a key to unlock it from the inside (more secure), I pointed out that in the event of a fire the exit from the building would be delayed (possibly fatally) by searching for the keys, we got thumbwheels.
(it is frightening that of the many doors I knock on each day, the householder has to go off hunting for the keys to open it)
The idea is compartmentalisation.
1. Room door
2. Flat door
3. Corridor door
4. Stairwell door
Even if he propped open all his internal doors and his flat door the fire would have been restricted to his flat and the corridor.
The fire escaped from his flat either via the window or an extractor fan (cooker hood or ventilator) and directly set the cladding on fire.
Whoever signed off on the safety of the cladding installation will be going to jail (because it compromised the entire compartmentalisation strategy).
Emptying tower blocks because they have the same type of cladding is a nonsensical over reaction, as long as the cladding has been installed correctly so as to maintain the compartmentalisation then the building is not at risk.
An idiot can still prop open his doors and burn out his flat (including the cladding attached to his flat) but the fire will be restricted to his flat alone.
“BobRocket
An idiot can still prop open his doors and burn out his flat…”
Used to be that I’d agree with you but if you can get yourself re-housed in a new flat, maybe not such an idiot…
As a landlord I can assure you that all tenants of all races, all religions and all cultures are the stupidest, laziest and dirtiest elements of humanity.
There is a massive decrease in tenant IQ, energy and cleanliness that occurs when they occupy a rental unit and an opposite, but larger, reversal when, and if, they occupy their own homes.
My experience as a landlord differs from Fred Z’s – probably because different types of property attract different types of tenant.
It’s too late – Britain is in full – scale moral panic mode now. Kiss your children extra hard tonight everyone – it may be the last you see of them.
I understand the requirement for self closing on every internal door has been relaxed in recent years, it was proving counter productive as the irritrating tendency to sef-close just encourages them to be wedge open. If found in my own flat that not having self closing on internal door meant that they tended to be closed more often than when wedge open.
What has not changed is the requirement for a self closing door at the flat entrance and a lobby to isolate that entrance from any habitable room.
AndrewC,
forensics will tell you that the culprit was a) an 8 year old boy playing with stuff that got out of hand, b) negligent/ignorant adults living in squalor, c) deliberate act, e) accidental or d) corporate neglect.
a) needs some space and an understanding of risk management, b and d) just needs a bit of education and monitoring in their new home, c) gets rehoused in strangeways, d) CEO and everybody down the risk management chain gets rehoused in strangeways.
With freedom comes responsibility, with responsibility comes consequences.
If the CEO, Tenant or Small Boy have no skin in the game then lessons will never be taught nor learned.
djc,
it is human nature to circumvent the best laid plans for convenience.
Simple solution is for weak hold open electro-magnets on the doors, you can make an internal/flat door stay open by opening it fully and sticking it to the wall but in the event of an alarm going off (in flat, on floor, in sector, in building) the magnets collapse and the doors swing shut.
(Corridor doors and Stairwell doors still have to be propped open by fire extinguishers)
None of this is rocket science, it is human engineering.
Meissen, don’t leave me hanging, what’s your secret.
Fred Z
pay a good and reputable agent to run your business for you because you don’t have a f. clue.
(here’s a clue, if you are earning below market rates overall, you are dragging the market down and future investment will not be forthcoming)
Fred Z, you only currently have money because people like me have decided not to take it off you yet.
Neither of my flats in France have self-closing doors, either internally or at the front doors. Only the exit from the lobby to the street does. I’m not convinced the French regulations are particularly relaxed. I’m in buildings of 8 and 4 storeys respectively. Both are new, post 2010.