Grenfell Tower-type cladding found at 13 Auckland sites
Building consultant says NZ towers much safer, but urges buyers to check, to avoid financial risks
Buyers should check they are not purchasing apartments in some of the residential blocks which Auckland Council has identified as having flammable polyethylene cores in their aluminium cladding — potentially highly combustible like London’s Grenfell Tower — says an expert.
Sean Marshall, managing director of building and construction consultants Prendos, says although New Zealand high-rise apartment blocks are much safer than Grenfell because they have fire protection measures such as sprinklers and other measures, he would be cautious when advising clients who asked about the merits of buying into one of the blocks identified by the council.
The council found 13 residential blocks in Auckland with cladding cores like Grenfell and 42 with similar panels but less combustible than Grenfell.
“I wouldn’t tell them not to buy outright but I’d say ‘it’s in your interests to have a senior building surveyor visit the property, view the building file and write a report stating whether the building has that polyethylene core’,” Marshall said.
“It’s not about burning to death in a fire. It’s more about the commercial risk of ‘are you going to have problems on-selling a place in a block identified as having these types of panels’?”, Marshall said.
At Grenfell, 71 people died after last year’s fire in the 24-level block, clad in the highly flammable polyethylene-core aluminum composite panels. That sparked a New
People often spend more time and money having a car checked out before they buy, rather than an apartment. That’s not the way it is in Europe.
Sean Marshall
Zealand residential building cladding review, led by the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment and involving councils.
In Wellington, 103 buildings have some potentially combustible cladding.
Ian McCormick, the Auckland council’s building consents general manager, said an extensive review had found 13 Auckland blocks with the polyethylene cores. But the council won’t name those.
“We will not be providing details of the 13 buildings,” a council spokesperson told the Herald.
“Last year, we conducted a comprehensive review of buildings in Auckland that potentially had elements of ACP [aluminium composite panel] cladding,” McCormick said. “We have subsequently reviewed over 215 buildings. Some of these involve sites with multiple buildings which we have also individually assessed and 42 of the buildings had some degree of the less combustible ACP-FR [fire retardant] cladding panels,” he said.
Most of the panels would be combustible to some extent, he added. “Thirteen have the polyethylene core panels and a further 70 buildings have cores which have not yet been confirmed (which for the purposes of assessment we treated as ACP-PE ) or are under 25m or have a sprinkler system. In each case, as part of our review, we considered the performance of the cladding product holistically as part of the overall cladding system,” McCormick said.
In many cases, ACP use was limited and associated with building features that served to reduce any potential risk, such as sprinkler systems, he said.
“In each case we have communicated this with building owners or the body corporate,” McCormick said.
Marshall said it was hard for buyers because the riskiest buildings were unnamed.
The council said the 13 did not include Orewa’s Nautilus or Takapuna’s Spencer On Byron because they were under repair.
“So people need to do their own due diligence,” Marshall said. “People often spend more time and money having a car checked out before they buy, rather than an apartment. That’s not the way it is in Europe,” he said.
An expert would need to remove a panel from a building and test it, then tell a potential buyer if the block had that type of panel, he said. People often blamed councils for building issues but if they did better due diligence, they could avoid many issues, Marshall said, because they would have been better informed.