Noel Isherwood

Clothing and Building Materials

Clothing and Building Materials

If you are prone to taking a ramble or even a scramble up one of our delightful UK mountains, you will be familiar with the occasional need to scour the market for the appropriate outdoor gear.

What time of the year is it? Are we going for autumn or spring or are we pushing the limits by going during the winter – very cold or summer – very hot.

Am I looking to keep the rain out or looking for a breathable membrane to reduce the risk of getting soaked from the inside? The cheaper garments tend to be good at one or the other whilst the more sophisticated garments can do both, but at a cost. As you venture into more extreme climates and levels of exposure, choosing the right combination of outdoor gear is not just a question of the level of comfort or discomfort you’re willing to put up with, but can be a matter of life and death.

So it is with buildings.

You will have had ‘building regulations’ and ‘fire prevention’ thrown into conversations recently following the tragic Grenfell tower fire in West London. A duvet quilt of insulation type cladding system was thrown over this building to improve the comfort conditions on the inside for the residents on the cooler days of the year. Perhaps there was also an element of let’s make these concrete blocks look better and brighten up our dreary neighbourhood?

Just as buying the right jacket for extreme weather conditions has become something of a science, so it is with choosing building materials. Around 100 years ago there were approximately 55 standard building materials you could choose from to construct your building, the properties of which were all well understood due to centuries of perfecting their use. Today the building industry produces in the order of 55,000 products for the construction of buildings, many of which have had far less testing, perhaps only a handful of years in some cases.

Added to this, during the last 40 years we have seen the gradual erosion of local government control over building standards and regulating powers. Through privatisation, these powers have been devolved to third-party organisations, but not completely, so there is naturally more room for interpretation, confusion and dare I say it, error.

When you embark on your own building project, you need to have confidence in the design team you choose to lead you through this morass!

The team I run at Noel Isherwood have considerable experience over many years of dealing with the increasing complexity of the building industry, from town planning to building construction and from design to customer satisfaction.

Noel

If you are taking the next step with your project you can apply for a free telephone consultation with me by calling +44 (0) 789 1776251 or alternatively enter your details here and I will arrange for a free 30 minute consultation.

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