On Friday 06 December 2013 19:47 ARW wrote in uk.d-i-y:

A small section of a recently fitted and quite low down suspended ceiling
"fell down" today in a secondary schools corridor.

The council got an a independant guy out to check that there were enough
hangers to support the ceiling and make sure the builders had not bodged
the job. Well the hangers were NOT at the recommended placings (ie not at
1200mm but at 1900mm). Not that that made the ceiling fall down according
to the expert[1].

Now here is the daft risk assessment. They demanded an electrician on site
to turn the corridor lighting MCB off (and stay on site until it was time
to turn it back on) so that the this expert could remove some ceiling
tiles to have a look above the ceilings in rest of the corridor that had
not "fallen down". FFS you could not make it up.

That might make some sense if the lumineres were of the type that sit in the
grid frame in place of a tile or mounted in a tile cutout - I could imagine
collapsed ceilings maybe breaking the flex out of the fitting and dangling
around live.

But I assume this did not have that type of lighting.

As for MCB off to lift a tile - FFS! I've had my head up in enough ceilings
at work (looking for network cables usually) and I'd be hard pressed to see
how you could fry yourself.


And if that is not bad enough the primary school I also worked at sent
permission letters back with the kids tht needed signing because the fire
brigade were going to do a display for the school and the fire engines
have CCTV. No sig and the kid cannot watch the display.

That I can assure you is the school being a bunch of numpties. We had the
full monty last week - ambulance, engine and police car and no slip. Last
slip I had was to do with an actual excursion to Hastings.

[1] His expert advice was "some little ****er has jumped up and pulled it
down"

Probably

When I was 10 at school, we had the roof insulator firm in. Big (8") flexi
pipe across the corridor blowing some sort of fibre with a static charge
applied to make it cling. Right over out heads.

The only warning we got was "don;t trip over the pipe" and "don't touch that
wire, it'll give you a belt" (it did!).

Funny thing was, the workmen buggered off for tea, our teacher said he had
to get something from the other building and we were to sit still unattended
(hardly ever happened).

Anyway, we were yabbering away and punching each other and stuff, then
suddenly "bang!". Some other kid (11 year old) had climbed up the ladder
into the roof space, gone for a walk and discovered the ceiling was not
actually very strong - he fell through a 3m igh ceiling and landed bum first
into the blackboard shelf (quite deep), bounced off and landed on the floor.
Luckily for his arse he'd missed the pile of drawing pins!

Anyway, he limped off and we told the teacher when he returned.

Response: "Well, he shouldn't have been up there!" And that was the end of
that...



Can you imagine doing blown fibre insulation in a running school now
(especially as it clearly a crap idea in 1978!).



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