Wooaahhh!!!!! Steady guys
some people just dont like the hearing the truth (out of my arse or not dingbat - its true!
)
dingbat appears to dress up in womens underwear at the weekend - i've not checked this out but it might be true so surely its worth saying
Lots of 'AFAIK' and 'appears to be talking out of his a**e' being spouted
but I'm just telling you what the regulations say - if you dont like it or disagree with them then take it up with the guys who write them and get them through parliment - your
MP. Pick up part B and find table A1 and as you can see Floors in 2 storey dwellings require fire resistance
As for the stairs it does seem like a bit of an anomaly but think about it -
the floor needs to stay in place if there is a fire in the room below. This is so the people dont drop onto the fire because of the floor collapsing or so the fire doesn't burn through the floor into the room above too quickly. This time period is to give the people in the house either to become aware of the fire and escape or be rescued.
it doesn't stop the travel of the fire up the staircase - but if the fire travels up the staircase its not impairing the strength of the floor and thats what we are talking about.
if there is a fire in a downstairs room your not going to stand in the hallway - either you'll go down the stairs and out or if the stair is smoke logged you'll retreat to a bedroom and out a window or wait to be rescued by the fire brigade
hallways and stairwells are considered (rightly or wrongly) to be lower risk areas for an accidental fire to start (normally don't contain electrical kit, much furnishing, not likely to have someone fall asleep smoking in etc)
I've not seen the BRE reports, they sound interesting - what are there titles/references
I have seen other test reports which dictate the floor construction, panel size, downlighter spacings etc - rarely replicated on site due to downlighter spacings and joist sizes & certainly didnt say 'you can f*ck up your ceilings as much as you like'
.
You can argue out the reasoning behind it but to say that normal 2 storey houses dont need fire resistant floors under the regulations is wrong. Its a common misconception spread by people who havent read the regs or listen to those who spout this twaddle.
P.S. the hoods are also needed for sound resistance reasons - so if you exhaust the fire resistance reasons, move onto the sound resistance