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Monday, September 06 2010 @ 07:11 BST

Conservatories/Burglary resistance

Friday, September 01 2006 @ 02:00 BST
Contributed by: Admin
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The application of building regulations to conservatories and the possible introduction of ENs for Burglary Resistance - Author - Paul Jervis

Some good news, some not so good news this month. Never one to leave people on a high note, I’ll do the good stuff first and then bring you back to earth. (Funny, I started enjoying doing that around the time I realised that pulling the legs off spiders was not acceptable to most people).

I’ve written in the past about the proposals to apply building regulations to conservatories over 5 m2 and the cost that would add to industry. We spent days and days in meetings with the ODPM’s Building Regulation Advisory Committee Working Group on Conservatories (snappy name, not so snappy pace). We worked out what all the additional work would cost and I must confess to being surprised when I added up the figures. The worst case suggested that Ł4000 would have been added to the costs of a Ł10,000 conservatory. Some of our figures were disputed but the scale of them remained massive however you looked at it.

And then it all went very quiet. The Working Group has not met since November 2004. Nothing has come out from ODPM to suggest that the imposition of regulations on conservatories was imminent. And then, in passing, it was mentioned to me that in an interview on Radio 4, the Minister responsible, Yvette Cooper had replied to questions on precisely this topic. I managed to get hold of a transcript of the section of the Today programme and here’s an extract of what the Minister said :

“Conservatories have not been included in the Building Regulations for about 25 years, and its true that we don’t have proposals to include conservatories in full-blown Building Regulations. It is quite a cumbersome process for relatively minor works, but what we are doing is looking far more widely at what is the best way to improve the energy efficiency of the whole house, what new measures might be appropriate what might make a difference, and I think it is wrong for you report simply to concentrate on isolated individual measures. When you look at the overall impact of what we are doing, which is not only increasing the energy efficiency of new homes, but there is a very great impact on existing homes as well.”

and

“The position of conservatories was looked at about five years ago and it is different from the position of new extensions, new buildings and new major works. And you have to think before looking at existing homes – the biggest thing you can do to help existing homes is things like offer incentives for putting in insulation, sorting out your loft, and as a result of the new duty on energy companies 10m households over the last three years have had energy saving measures introduced, That is a way in which you can have a really big impact.”

So, good news that we do not have the enormous financial impositions that could have been applied, and conservatories under 30m2 remain exempt from full Building Regulation control but that doesn’t mean we can be complacent. Government may change its mind at any time, and it doesn’t mean we should not introduce necessary improvements. There is no reason why we shouldn’t be improving the thermal performance - low e sealed units, insulated floor slabs and the like. And we should be conscientious in constructing conservatories to best practice, for instance inserting a vertical dpc where a conservatory meets the house in exposed areas.

At the time of the original proposals we drafted a stand-alone guide to conservatories and Building Regulations which could have formed the basis for a self-certification scheme. Perhaps it is time to consider completing that and circulating it for comment to see whether it could/should be adopted as a conservatory installation best practice manual.

And now the not so good news. Everybody is familiar with BS7950 and PAS24 and many companies have had products tested for enhanced security against them. Most will be not as aware of the draft European Standards on burglar resistance, prENs 1627, 1628, 1629 and 1630. The chances are that you will become as familiar with them in the future as you are with BS7950 and PAS24. These drafts have been knocking around for years. For many years they existed as ENVs, the European equivalent of our Draft for Development (they were published in this country as DD ENVs). Part of the rules of ENVs is that they must be converted to full standards, ENs, or be withdrawn completely within a set timescale. We are now in the process of that conversion and the latest drafts have been circulated for Public Enquiry.

These draft standards have a different philosophy to BS7950 and PAS24. Instead of pass/fail criteria, they have 6 levels of performance in them. UK concerns are mainly in two areas, although there are other more detailed but perhaps less critical concerns. In all but the lowest class, manual attacks are made on the products, not as in BS7950 and PAS24 to determine where the weak points are so that static loads can be applied to test specimens, but as an integral part of the requirements. So, unless we have a standard tester, we are going to have differences – Lennox Lewis is likely to be able to apply loads somewhat greater than Kylie Mynogue, for instance. The potential for market distortion is immense with manufacturers conceivably shopping around for 7 stone weakling testers.

The second area of concern is the loads to be applied. Currently windows in the UK have to withstand a 3 kN load but would have to withstand 6 kN in class 3 of the drafts (mainly domestic-type applications). Who knows whether our current range of products could withstand the doubling of the load.

And we can’t just say that we will only use Class 1 for the UK as an annex to one of the standards states :

“Classes 1, 2 and 3 are intended to address the levels of attack normal associated with the casual or opportunist burglar. It is believed that these attacks are the result of an opportunity presenting itself with no particular regard to the likely reward that success may bring. The level of force used in not excessive and the tools used are more likely to be common hand tools and levers.
Burglaries covered by these classes are likely to avoid noise and unnecessary risk. As risk is associated with time, the period spent attempting to gain entry is limited and varies with the classes.”

This reads very much as BS 7950 and PAS 24, so specifiers are going to be calling for Class 3 in many instances.

We could just vote against these drafts and, with sufficient negative votes from other member states, the drafts could be binned. But this could lead to problems all of its own. When these drafts were first being discussed and opposition to them was strong, the European body representing the insurance industry (this was so long ago I can’t remember the name of the organization) left us in no doubt that they would take over and use the drafts as their own if CEN did not publish them. I can only assume their position remains the same. Indeed, a set of early drafts is currently being used a certification body in this country but more in the commercial rather than domestic field. The predicament is whether we vote against the drafts and let the insurance industry pick up and run with the ball without any influence from us, or do we support them in CEN where we will at least be able to influence their development in the future.

Anybody got a coin we can toss?

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