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Originally Posted by Hugh
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I made the point at the time, that the purge panels(from the plans) allowed easy access to/from the outside. The point being it was still a large distance from the cladding to the inside of the building. The fire would've been unable to spread back inside the building unless there was something else in that large distance that could catch fire, ie THE INSULATION, which was mentioned in the report.
It could be seen at the time that the fire spread OUTSIDE the building, in an upwards and sideways manner. Regardless of any limited spreading via the cladding, the insulation would've spread it anyway. There is a reason the manufacturers specified that the insulation had to be surrounded by non-combustible material, eg cement panels.
From a design point of view, if you had looked at the listing of potential materials on the RIBA website, then you would've seen an entry for the insulation material used, that said it was the only one of its type that could be used in high buildings. It didn't go into any further details, and it was
more expensive than the insulation originally in the plans(yes I checked plans and prices at the time
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b. The presence of polyisocyanurate (PIR) and phenolic foam insulation boards behind the ACM panels, and perhaps components of the window surrounds, contributed to the rate and extent of vertical flame spread.
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That stuff was 100mm and 150mm thick, compared to a few mm for the cladding. Which is going to burn more ferociously and for longer?