Are building regs required?

Steel_2

We are about to put in a pair of french doors from our kitchen to our conservatory and have two questions about building regs. Can anyone help?

1) The doors are being fitted in a space where a window opening used to be and we are taking out the window and cutting out the brickwork underneath. The window already had a lintel inserted above it to support the upper floor when the house was built in the 1950s. So, as we are not adding in a lintel or structurally weakening what is there, do we need to have the work inspected for building regs certificate when we've finished?

2) The doors are hardwood double glazed external doors and were given to us by a friend who was replacing them with white uPVC pair because she didn't like them anymore. They must be at least 10 years old and we were wondering whether these would be acceptable now given the regulations for glazing etc have changed since? They clearly have the kite mark displayed in one corner of each panel, the main locks are chubb and kitemarked, and there will be proper bolts to be fitted top and bottom into the brickwork.

Any ideas?

thebaldwindowfitter

you will need to conform to building regs because you are changing a window to a door way .the doors you have will not be suitable unless they can be proved to conform to document L that is unless your conservatory already has low "e" glass was built after april 2002 and conforms to current building regs

Steel_2

Thanks a6

I spoke to the building regs department and got lots more info. Have just filled in a building application notice and added a cheque for £117.50 as the job is less than £2k. I should have the go ahead in about three days and they'll come and inspect once the work is complete. In fact they said if I ring before 10am they'll come round the same day.

Very efficient!

Unlike my carpenter who has just pulled out of the job of making the frame the day before he was due to come here and do it as he's very busy. I booked the guy eight weeks ago. And I was the one who rung him to find out what time he was coming.

Very, very annoying.

As for the glass, we're going to fit the doors and have the double glazed replaced. We've compared the costs and it's simply too expensive to buy a set of doors and static panel new.

Once again thanks a6. Much appreciated.

Steel_2

tell me about it.

But building regs people are just as confusing.

Hubby went to the council offices today to ask about another project we had in mind and it seems that our current project was chatted about and some new information came to light.

If the area of glass in the new doors exceeds 25% of the wall space they are mounted on, we have to have a much higher specification of glass than the ordinary double glazed units we were going to have manufactured.

Naturally the glass will exceed the 25% permissable, so back we go to the manufacturer to get another quote.

Also, we were quizzed about the presence or absence of an extractor fan in the kitchen leading to the conservatory to vent the moisture and it seems we need to get one of those fitted if our kitchen is to comply with building regulations and get an electrician who is Registered Part P Electrical Installer to fit it.

The conservatory wraps across the entire wall of the kitchen so quite where I'm going to put a fan so it vents to the outside is beyond me. There is nowhere for it to go.

I have PMT and just want to crush someone's head in a vice right now. The costs for this simple project are steadily rising and so is my blood pressure.

Steel_2

Ok...hubby has cooked, filled me with martini and I'm calmer. There is a plan.

We can get a fan kit with a 90 degree bend designed to be installed in a ceiling. So, the plan is to take up the floorboards in the corner of the bedroom above the kitchen, install the fan into the ceiling and run the pipe through the wall so it vents to the outside well above the conservatory. Then we replace the floorboards.

Also, our window manufacturer says the council adviser is wrong. It's actually 25% of the total floor area of the house. So tomorrow we go back to the council offices to check again.

Don't mind me while I ramble away on this thread for a while as we sort this out. Hopefully someone besides us will find the info useful.

designermatt_2

Your windows people are half right..The rule about 25% is to do with extensions.. It is a complicated situation. If when building an extension the glazed area is over 25% of the floor area of the extension after subtracting the existing openings covered up by the extension then you will have to go down a different route that the elemental 'U'-Value calculation.
In your instance as you are not extending you would need to look at the plan area of the whole house. If you can provide drawings showing the plans onboth floors and the elevations showing the areas of openings over both floors and those areas of openings are less than 25% of the floor area then no problem. The windows however will need to have an over all 'U'-Value for the whole unit of no worse than 1.8 W/m2K or 2.2 for mainly glazed doors. This should be possible with a decent glazing unit with possibly argon fill and low e coating.

Essentially you do not need to make an application. I wold ask Building Control to point out where in the Statutory instrument it says you do. If they pull you on it they are being very harsh.

The doors into your conservatory also should be no worse than any of your other external doors and windows....

Hope this helps

Steel_2

Thanks Designermatt

The building control inspector was also very keen to know if we had double glazing in the house and when\if it was replaced as that would need a building application too. He sounded quite disappointed when we told him that Anglian Windows had done them last year, as apparently they would have taken care of all of that and self-certified them for a FENSA certificate.

This is the same building inspector that apparently refused the previous owners of this house clearance on a room conversion unless an (existing) bathroom next door to it had a fan put in. Hence the reason we're going to put a fan in kitchen before he gets a chance to tell us we need that. He seems to be a little over zealous and think he may try and do a walk around the house to see what else doesn't comply....

Hubby now wants to know, if instead of the 'recycled' wooden doors, we bite the bullet and pay for a set of uPVC french doors and have them professionally installed, whether we have to bother with the building regs as the company will sort that out like Anglian did with our windows?

Anyone know?

rocky_robin

I thought you had to have fire-proof doors between the adjoining room and your conservatory, so that it could be closed off. I was told that otherwise the conservatory was technically an extension and needed planning permission.
How is the conservatory currently accessed from the house or is it "open plan"?

We went through all this last year when we extended our dining room by building on a conservatory and exchanging the dining room window for french doors.
We were covered by the planning application which we had to put in as our house had no "permitted development rights" but we then needed building regs for changes to the electrics and moving an internal wall back 1.5 metres into the integrated garage to extend the dining room on the other side

I would always play safe and contact the council for advice rather than relying on tradesmen, most of whom we found were happy to quote and take the money without giving us the full picture.
I don't want to tar them all with the same brush as the guy we eventually chose was the cheapest and the only one who mentioned planning and saved us from having a £10K building which would have needed knocking down again.

Steel_2

You didn't mention whether your conservatory is going to be used all year round as a habitable room in your house, but it sounds like you are using it as additional permanent living space and so have fitted it with 'internal' french doors, which probably would have to be fire-proof. In England and Wales, this type of use of a conservatory to form an extension to your dining room would need planning permission.

Our conservatory will be used probably for a few months of the year, but not in winter as we tend to hang out in our living room near the open fire. It's within certain size limits that we're permitted to develop, is not situated close to a public highway, it's less than 2m in height, there will be no permanent heating source in there and the french doors we fit will be 'external' standard doors with a five point multi-locking system (we've decided to go for it and get the uPVC ones now).

We went through all these criteria with the council long before we ever put the conservatory up and we met every one of their parameters (that's the English, not Scottish rules) for the conservatory being a temporary structure only and not an independent room, hence we were advised by the council over a year ago that we do not need planing permission and nothing about what we have planned has changed to cause this to be different.

All that's in the dispute now is the building regs.

I have spoken to the council over the last few days - extensively - and get a different interpretation of the building regulation rules depending who is on duty at the time.

I guess all we can do is calculate the window to floor area ratio and if that's ok, get the building regs notice registered, fit the doors and the fan, get the electrics fitted by a certified electrician to the standards the council require and get the inspector to come out and inspect afterwards. He'll soon tell us if there's something remiss.

Steel_2

Sorry if I keep mentioning English/Welsh rules vs Scottish rules but I know sometimes people can post information based on their experience and I wanted to make it clear what system I come under.

The User Cps for this forum don't tell you where people are located so you can end up in a confused debate over nothing sometimes...

Steel_2

Interesting development.

The door manufacturer has come back with a quote for the doors which we are going ahead with. We worked out it just as much to get a chippie in to do the frame and then get the replacement glass manufactured as it would be to have uPVC doors fitted in the first place - and they would probably be more secure.

Here's the interesting bit - we do NOT need to personally get building regs if they fit it because they are registered installer of replacement windows and doors (including where windows are changed to French doors) and will issue us with a Fensa certificate which confirms to the council that the installation has been completed to the specifications required by the building regulations.

FENSA come and inspect roughly one in every 20 jobs they perform to ensure standards are adhered to so they are continually checked up on.

If we had gone down the route of getting the carpenter in to do a wooden frame and fitting our old doors, or fitted the uPVC doors ourselves, we would have had to get building regs notice and an inspector out.

Just spoke the someone at the council and they have confirmed this.

Also, just found out that hubby has very sneakily not sent off the building notice application yet which I gave him to post the other night. Apparently he wasn't happy with me paying for the notice and had intended to rip up the cheque and pay for it himself. So we are paying the installers £60 to install it and certificate for building regs rather than sent £117.50 to the council for the notice and go to all the hassle ourselves of sorting it all out :T :T :T

Relief - such a huge weight off my mind.