Fire, Security and Safety

With fire safety the dominant issue in housing today, it is always a pleasure to see such refurbishment projects successfully completed. We spoke to Richard Izzard, managing director of aluminium decking manufacturer AliDeck, to discuss their contribution to a recent major fire safety remediation project for Hyde Housing.

When new customers contact us at Colt about setting up their contracts, we frequently get asked a few common questions. If you have just taken over management of a new building and are unsure about where to start with your fire safety systems maintenance schedule, this article may have some of the answers you are looking for.

Accessibility continues to be an important issue for Housing Associations, helping tenants with a wide variety of needs and requirements to carry out everyday tasks and live more independently. There are, however, still significant gaps in building accessibility across the country. According to figures, 91% of all UK homes do not provide even the lowest level of accessibility , requiring urgent action from the housing industry.

Leading hardware distributor, Carl F Groupco, is celebrating 20 years of supplying the market leading fully reversible Roto FRH UNI window hardware in the UK. During the past two decades, the FRH UNI range has become the most successful window product range in Carl F Groupco’s portfolio, owing its success to the functionality provided and the strong reputation of the UNI brand in the UK market.

FRH UNI hardware is designed to suit traditional reversible window profiles, including PVCu, timber, aluminium and timber/aluminium composite windows. It’s a robust hardware system designed for situations where safe control of the window opening is necessary: including high-rise applications where wind and height issues are of concern. Safety features such as integral child restrictors and reverse catches provide ultimate protection.

As legislation has continued to evolve following Grenfell, achieving fire safety has become the major challenge for property managers and building owners across the UK. We spoke to Richard Izzard, managing director of aluminium decking manufacturer AliDeck, to find out more about effective solutions for full compliance.

Fire safety remains the major concern in the housing sector. Despite several years of legislation and regulation updates, however, a settled conclusion seems remote. The industry-led EWS1 initiative attempted to provide clarity on risk for lenders and unblock the market but was quickly undermined by changing Government advice relating to height of affected buildings.

Designing ventilated façades for building exteriors is a popular method in modern construction which introduces a series of performance benefits for occupants – but also raises specific fire safety considerations. Will Wigfield, Product Manager – Building Envelope at ROCKWOOL UK, discusses the benefits of ventilated façades and the merits of a total solutions approach to fire safety.  

In a ventilated façade system, the outside face of a building is formed by cladding panels fixed back to a load-bearing wall, creating a cavity through which air is free to circulate. This air space does more than just prevent condensation – in summer, warm weather causes a convectional air current which helps to cool the building, whereas in winter, air in the cavity remains still and provides an insulating effect.

In addition to tenant comfort, ventilated façade constructions give designers a high degree of creative freedom to produce striking exteriors that perform as well as they look.

A new social housing complex, developed by Metroman Ltd, has joined forces with Videx UK to install a state-of-the-art door entry system. The London based development is split into 11 apartment blocks and fitted with Videx’s flagship VX2200 door entry system along with Videx MiAccess access control and hands-free video monitors.