Building regulations - fire safety.

dangergoat

I am in the process of buying a house and I'm unsure as to whether it meets current building regulations relating to fire safety. It is 3-storey. The second (top) floor consists of a bathroom, living room and a bedroom. What is a little unusual, is that there are only 2 small "porthole" windows, high up on this top floor. These certainly don't meet the requitrements of an "emergency egress window" as set out in the building regulations document B1 - Means Of Warning And Escape. But I am unclear as to whether this requirement applies on the 2nd floor, or whether a "protected stairway" alone is all that is required. Can anyone help?

Babylonian_2

Sounds a bit dodgy to me - just been going through the same thing - what I did was to ask a "builder who knows" about the regs to take a look inside and advise me further.

We discussed windows today and his view was that they should be big enough to allow someone to get onto the roof and wait for help - the "man from the council" I also spoke to went into some detail about distance needed from the ground etc for windows upstairs, to enable a clear escape.

BobProperty

How old is this work? Building Regulations are almost never retrospective. If it has been done recently the local Building Control should have records of it and your solicitor should be asking for proof of compliance. Solicitor should be asking for any Building Regs or Planning Approvals anyway.

dangergoat

Completion certificate is March '05, but this was four a 4 bed house with 2nd floor subdivided for "storage/playroom" according to the seller. Bathroom, living room and bedroom have been put in since without any sort of sign-off. Seller claims Builinding Control/sign-off wasn't need for changes he's made and that present arrangement does meet fire regs.

Any advice appreciated.

Bagger

Dangergoat, I may be able to shed light on this. I am concerned by the phrase "Seller claims Building Control/sign-off wasn't needed".

First of all, I am assuming you have normal stairs to the second level. If this second level is habitable, then as far as Fire Regulations are concerned, you have a three storey building. I am in exactly the same situation.

In a three storey building, the 2nd floor needs to have a half hour fire door leading up to it. This means all walls etc have to be 1/2 hour fire resistant. In other words, if there is a fire on a level below the 2nd floor, anyone on the 2nd floor should be able to survive for half an hour. It is hoped that the fire brigade will get there in time to perform a rescue.

The other issue which you haven't mentioned is that all your bedroom doors also have to be half hour fire doors. This rule cost me plently. I had to change all my bedroom doors.

Also, you must have linked smoke detectors on each of the 3 levels. This is best done with a mains powered system.

My house was refurbished in 2003 so I think the rules will apply to a house refurbished in 2005. The fact that the person refurbishing the house did not seek building regulation probably means that it was carried out illegally. I must tell you that it is a pain going through the inspections, but it is a necessary evil. At the end of the day, it is your life.

Finally, one other rule which I think is bonkers. All your fire doors have to be self-closing. This is a real pain because the kids get their fingers trapped etc. When the house passed its inspection, I removed the self-closing mechanism.

Hope this helps.

Bagger

Bagger

Dangergoat, one other point I just noticed. The original sign-off was for a playroom. You wouldn't have needed the fire regulations I mentioned earlier for this. However, this depends on the inspector/council. In my case, the 2nd floor is used as a study. The inspector said that if I sold the house, the new owners MAY use it as a bedroom and hence he will assume it is a bedroom for fire regulations.

The fact that your 2nd floor now has been converted to include a bedroom without building regulations suggest to me that it has been done illegally. I would be very wary of this. It will cost quite a bit to sort it out.

By the way, I work for a company that investigates house fires. All I can tell you is that a number of people die needlessly each year because they fail to comply with the rules. Some things are common sense. I still couldn't believe that people use to install double glazing in bedrooms which did not have an opening to allow someone to escape easily. The best advice I can give you is to imagine there is a fire in the house and decide how the inhabitants are going to escape the fire. You can assume the fire brigade will be there in about 20 minutes. Don't forget that fires produce smoke and most people in these situations die of smoke inhalation.

Bagger
PS Ask yourself, is your life worth a few thousand pounds?

lush_walrus

If the property were completed in 2005, then most certainly the current buiding regs for part B apply, as the latest update for Part B was in 2002. But in saying that the Building Reg documents are a guidline rather than set in stone and are open to interpretation, thus the process is more complex than a + b = c.

Once an application is put in, an officer is assigned to the project, that officer then assesses the application for compliance with the current regs and in the case of fire, fire officers are brought in to see if in the case of a fire someone would safely be able to exit. In that application, if the applicant be it an architect or the client (ie the developers or whoever you are buying the house from) can put forward a case that something is acceptable, the plans can still be passed.

Now in your case, although it states in the building regs that habitable rooms should have an openable section at least 0.33sqm with a minimum size of 450mm x 450mm, it is really only the case if it would be a pluasable escape. So the fact that it is on the 2nd floor, could mean that a case has been made that by using a window on that floor as a means of escape would prove to be more dangerous than to go down a flight of stairs to the next window available. The fact that the floor also has nothing flamable on it ie no kitchen could also mean that they have assessed that floor and the fact that it has a protected staircase off of it as being a low fire risk.

So basically, the point I am trying to make is that just because a building does not tick all of the boxes in the building regs does not necessarily follow that it would not pass. There are many pay offs if you like, in the building regs, which mean that nothing is followed exactly. As long as the fire officer was satisfied that in the case of a fire breaking out, someone located in that room would be able to make it to safety then the building would have passed.

As someone has suggested, the proof is in the documentation. If you want to find out if it passed or not, the cheapest and quickest method would be to call the building control deparment at the council offices which are in that area yourself (if you are thinking of not proceeding with the sale then its best to avoid the solicitor doing it as of course there will be a charge). Just give the address of the property, and ask if it has been passed, they will be able to look it up there and then for you, and your mind will then be settled one way or the other. Unlike planning applications, building control have not made their files accessable online yet.

bunking_off

I have a 3 storey house myself. Pretty much everything that Bagger says is correct. As I understand it, the stipulation is that you either have the window of specified size, or you must have an escape route to the ground which is protected by fireproof doors. In practical terms, that means every room onto the hallway/stairs/landings has to have a fireproof door with special casing (forget the terminology but it's a plastic strip that melts into the door when it gets hot) and self closing mechanisms. Where any doors are glazed, special glass is needed, which is either the bloody awful "georgian glazed" that you tend to see in firedoors in offices, or there is another type (which we got after much haggling with the builder) called Pyrodur, which doesn't have the wires but costs an absolute mint. It also means you need linked smoke detectors.

Like Bagger, in practical terms we've removed all the self-closers because I took the view that the fire risk wasn't so large as the risk to my sanity of cleaning up cat pee/worse when they got trapped in a room on a day to day basis. I do make a point of closing all the doors at night, however.

We don't have a window of the size you mention, nor has any of the houses I've seen of similar design (every builder does their own variant). It seems implausible to me that these have sneaked past building regs approval, so I've always worked on the basis that the protected escape route negated the need for route out of the window.