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Masonry buildings are by their nature and materials resistant to fire; but all buildings have cavities and some concealed spaces where fire can spread undetected.
To minimise the dangers of undetected fires you must provide barriers to reduce the area of the void space and to contain any spread…
For the past year LABC President, Richard Scott has been fundraising for Pancreatic Cancer UK. With just a couple of weeks remaining LABC will be opening an online auction of signed celebrity sporting goods to help him reach his target.
Richard has spent the past year relentlessly fundraising…
Poor scaffolding poses a significant risk to everyone. Scaffolding should be assembled to a generally recognised standard configuration such as NASC Technical Guidance TG20 for tube and fitting scaffolds or similar guidance from manufacturers of system scaffolds.
If not, the Work at Height…
When anyone mentions stone cladding, a certain property on Coronation Street springs to mind (No. 9 - formerly Jack and Vera Duckworth's - see below). Their cladding was installed in 1989 and given the blue painted touches in 1994.
Aside from changing the external appearance so that the property…
At 7:30am on Monday 11 December a gas explosion ripped through a property in Birstall, Leicester.
The incident was apparently caused by the failure of an internal gas pipe laid in the floor of the property, where the escaping gas was being ignited by the gas ignition system on the cooker.
The…
Building Regulations Approved Document C recommends using BS 8102 to design basements where walls and floors are subject to water pressure.
Three methods of basement waterproofing are defined in the standard:
“Type A” (barrier protection) which requires a tanking membrane
“Type B” (…
As thermal requirements for new builds have increased, designers have little option but to increase quantities of insulation within the external envelope of a structure such as the walls, floors and roof.
As cavities in masonry construction get bigger to achieve compliance, so do the structural…
A recent CROSS report detailed a situation where a reporter was asked to check the roof of a building which had been leaking for a few years but was still occupied. The roof consisted of flat cross-laminated timber (CLT) panels with falls provided by firing pieces with insulation and supporting…
When you’re contracted to carry out work in a loft area it’s important to know whether or not your project will be controllable under the building regulations and therefore require an inspection from building control. You must be aware that there are lots of building regulations that apply to loft…
The post-war housing shortage led to a boom in new ‘non-traditional’ methods of house construction which were mainly taken up by local and public authorities. There was an urgent need for new and replacement housing at a time when traditional building materials and skilled labour were in short…