17
There is a persistent assumption by some in construction that a product’s determine how safe a building will be. It does not, and new independent testing shows exactly why. IMA commissioned the Fire Protection
Association to carry out two comparative with identical reinforced bituminous One assembly used PIR insulation, EN 13501-1. The other used stone Everything else in the build-up, including the roof deck, membrane and attributed to the insulation layer. A propane burner was used to simulate
freely for almost 22 minutes before extinguishing. The results were clear. In both tests,
WJ5
broadly similar. Neither insulation depth, and the air and vapour control layer stayed intact underneath both. If anything, the damaged surface area was smaller on the PIR assembly than on the stone wool one. That result runs contrary to the
instinct that a non-combustible product must always outperform a combustible because it sounds counterintuitive to argue that a combustible material can But that instinct misunderstands what product’s performance in isolation tells you very little about how it behaves alongside a membrane, a deck and everything above it. We accept this readily enough with timber, which burns, yet remains a trusted structural material because of how it is designed and detailed within a building. The same This is not an argument for
complacency but empirical evidence WJ214
must outweigh simple opinion. Fire safety in any roof build-up depends on getting the whole system right, from everything mounted above it. But it is an ignoring how that material actually performs once installed. To download a summary of the testing,
which includes links to the full report, visit
https://tinyurl.com/36xt49uu
Most damp and mould cases start the same way: a resident reports black spots in a bedroom corner, someone visits, and the advice is to open a window and stop drying washing on the radiator. Sometimes that’s fair. Often it isn’t, and the resident knows it. The trouble is that a visit is a snapshot. Mould comes from what’s been happening in a home over weeks or months, and you can’t see that by standing in the room for twenty minutes. At Aico, we have developed algorithms
that look at home temperature and humidity patterns over months to determine whether damp and mould are present and even what the causes might be, i.e. ventilation or structural problems. But how do we calculate this just from environmental sensor data? Indoor and outdoor temperature, plus
how quickly the property loses heat, gives us a wall surface temperature. From there it’s school physics: how much moisture could the air at that cold surface hold, and how much is actually in the room? When the University of York tested the approach independently, it was right about 80% of the time Whose problem is it? Knowing a home is at risk is useful. Knowing why is far more useful, because it tells you who needs to do something. We break the risk into six parts. Some are about the building: high background humidity, walls that lose heat quickly, extractor fans that can’t keep up. Others are about how the home is used: big humidity spikes, heating that’s off when it should be on, ventilation that’s there but rarely switched on. Aico’s evidence-led, damp and
mould ‘recommendations’ use our case management system to gather data about interventions taken in the property and track which interventions have the biggest impact. We are continuously learning from our data
to improve these suggestions for customers. What changes on the ground In practice, it means far fewer wasted maintenance visits. If the sensors show a bathroom fan isn’t clearing moisture after showers, the surveyor turns up knowing to check the fan, not to speak about lids on pans. If the data shows a home sitting cold for most of the day in January, the conversation can start with support and money advice instead of blame. It also means we can act before the
black spots appear. A home that’s been creeping towards the danger point for rather than waiting for a complaint. Prevention is better than cure.
still need to knock on doors, talk to residents and use their judgement. The data just means they walk in with a better idea of what’s going on, and residents get treated as people who know their own homes best.
www.aico.co.uk
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44
