Fire, Security and Safety
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.
Newton House is a brand new Housing 21 Extra Care Living development in Penrith. It promotes independent living for people over the age of 55, with access to on-site care. The development offers 54 one and two bedroom apartments.
Newton House provides fully accessible facilities for residents and visitors. These include a restaurant, hair salon, residents’ lounge, activity room and communal gardens.
For the natural smoke ventilation system at Newton House, Dyer provided roof vents, dampers and louvres, and supplied and installed the controls in order to ventilate the communal areas.
The consequences of the failure to maintain smoke ventilation systems can be dire. Fire often grabs more headlines, but smoke is the real killer.
In fact, twice as many people die from smoke inhalation than they do from burns. Often smoke incapacitates so rapidly that victims are unable to make it to an otherwise accessible exit.
In this article, we will outline everything you need to know about smoke ventilation maintenance, including legislation, frequency, smoke ventilation maintenance services and more.