Posted By Steve Ireland Can someone help me save sometime.... I seem to remember somewhere in one of the Fire regs that flammable materials such as cardboard and pallets should be stored away from the building at a prescribed minimum distance. Can someone help me out and give me some direction so that I dont have to go through the regs. Thanks

Posted By Steve Ireland Thanks Heather, you dont have any further information available regarding the insurance best practice do you? Particularly the need for it to be stored in a immoblie state.

Posted By Heather Collins Robin This is about storage of material outside buildings not inside. Anything stored outside is potentially available to an arsonist for use as fuel. The thoery is that if there's a pile of wooden pallets stacked against the outside of the building they can easily be torched by anyone who comes along and take the building with them. But you knew that really didn't you? Steve - I must say first that my direct experience of this relates to requirements from OUR insurance company and indeed our own company fire safety standards. It relates mainly to sprinklered buildings where the principle is that we have attempted to minimise the loss by installing sprinklers, but this is negated if a large fire can be started outside the building that might spread into it and overwhelm the sprinkler system at an early stage. You might try the LPC guidelines - where I understand this originates from, but I don't have anything generic like that in writing I'm afraid, only our own specific requirements. Have you tried your own insurers? Heather

Posted By MichaelM Hello Steve When I have been doing Fire Safety Inspections to produce a Fire Risk Assessment, I have required that fuel sources and flammable / highly flammable materials are segregated. This doesn't mean that the cardboard etc is to be stored outside, it may mean for instance that a fire resistant cabinet is used for the storage of the flamm / h.flamm material. I have also come across starewells which should be used for evacuation to fire exits being used instead as storage for cleaners equipment/chemicals, paper and cardboard. In fact one refuge point sign couldn't be seen for the junk that was stored in the area. There are normally ways to manage storage situations better and we, it seems, are always tasked to come up with the "carrot and stick" approach to sort things out! Good luck Michael

Posted By Heather Collins Sorry Robin - my reply to you was supposed to sound tongue in cheek, but it didn't read like that did it? I did realise you were being equally tongue in cheek - honest! Heather

Posted By Merv Newman Mind what you say to a recently divorced lady.