Extension on house

Skye32

Hi All,

We have decided to have a 1st floor extension rather than move, as it's alot cheaper!!

We would like a bedroom with ensuite on top of our garage. Other houses in our street have had this done.

What I am asking is - what do I do? Do I need to find an architect (sp) to come round or contact the council first. Any ideas of time scales? Any advice would be very welcome. Thank you.:p

McAzrael

You need an architect if you need advice on how to build it, or an architectural technician will make drawings if you know what you want. Both will help you submit applications for planning and building control approval. You may need to get party wall approval if you build too close to your neighbours (your architect will advise you). Then you need to find the money and a builder.

Best of luck.

liitleblackcat

If it is a straightforward house extension, find an architectural technician to draw up the plans rather than an Architect (only RIBA qualified architects can call themselves Arichitect). Our technician charged us £25 an hour plus disbursements (mostly printing) - we found him through a friend of a friend.

We did a series of sketches of what we wanted and our technician took them away and worked them up into the planning application drawings and then after we got the planning consent he worked them up into building regs application drawings. He also organised a structural engineer, but we found one through my work for half the price.

He then drafted a contract and organised three tenders from builders he knew and trusted and the builders used the building regs drawings to provide a tender price and to work from during the construction.

Of course, you can do it all yourself, but we decided we didn't know enough about the building regs to do it properly (or any builders that we could trust).

From providing sketches to getting planning consent took 3 months (5 weeks to get the drawings completed and 8 weeks for the consent) and from there to getting building regs consent took another 3 months (5 weeks to get the drawings completed and 8 weeks for the consent, mostly getting the structural calcs done to the satisfaction of the building control officer).

Skye32

Thanks guys for your replies. I didn't think it would take so long, this has really helped and now I need to find an archetict in the cambridgeshire area. Any recommendations anyone?:D

marybishop

You could use a chartered building surveyor - www.rics.org 'Find a Surveyor'.

planning_officer

Also worth checking your local council's planning policies - I'm assuming that the 1st floor extension would be to the side of the existing house (as it's above the garage). Main issues would probably be the visual appearance of it in the street scene - every site is judged on its own merits, so don't assume that because others have done something similar, you will automatically get permission - rarely are two sites exactly the same! Although if it really is exactly the same as others in the road, and your property is no more prominent than others, then it could well be acceptable.

Other issues include visual coalescence with neighbouring property (i.e. is it going to 'close off' an important gap between two houses, to the detriment of the street scene - your council may well require a certain distance to be left to the boundary; impact on neighbours; and possibly parking standards, depending on how many parking spaces your council requires for certain sizes of dwelling. Local plans are public documents and should be viewable online.