Building tiles in UAE found to be flammable

Building tiles in UAE found to be flammable Dubai: A spate of high-rise fires in Sharjah over recent months has left hundreds of tenants in search of new homes, without possessions and wondering exactly why their houses went up in smoke. Using the three tiles, one with no fire-resistance properties, one with fire-retardant properties and one fire-resistant, Gulf News set the tiles alight using common barbecue fuel in three disposable barbecues. "There is no legal requirement in the UAE," he says. "The building codes and regulations seem to cover the insides of buildings quite well, but the outside seems to have been missed," explains Tom Bell-Wright, a civil and structural engineer who has been operating Thomas Bell-Wright International Consultants in Ras Al Khor since 1995. "Only about 10 per cent of the buildings constructed are actually tested to ensure that the materials used in the development of their exteriors can stand up to the rigours of their lifespan," he says. His company has tested components for the Burj Khalifa and for numerous key buildings and developments around the region. Gulf News approached Bell-Wright and his laboratory to conduct a non-scientific experiment using three samples of building cladding offered by Alubond, an Ajman-based manufacturer of the product used ubiquitously across the Middle East. It's light, flexible, cheap to manufacture and offers a modern exterior finish used to bring architectural plans to fruition. "The door has buckled slightly, but it has held as it was supposed to do," he explains. "High-rise building facades have to keep the weather out and the people in," Bell-Wright explains. "When you consider the number of new buildings which have gone up across the region in the past decade, I think there's a major issue going to arise. He points out that his company, for example, would never recommend to its clients that the materials used in the exterior of buildings were not fire resistant. "We have been calling for stringent regulations on cladding systems and materials for a long time, and the recent fires in Sharjah are now a wake-up call for everybody," he says. Elsewhere on the facility, full-size mock-ups of sections of buildings are under construction. "Abu Dhabi's are the most advanced, and the other emirates typically follow suit , but it's a very slow process. His company had just completed a very realistic test on a sample fireproof door of the kind which is to be used in the growth of DohaInternational Airport. But there's no regulatory requirement for new buildings to be tested and the use of 'Facade Consultants' is not nearly as prevalent as in North America and Western Europe. Building tiles in UAE found to be flammable Trade News selected by Local Linkup on 06/05/2012