Building Regs - Staircases - HELP!!!

ormus

http://www.stairplan.com/Partkpage8.pdf


diagram 6 is important.

babyangel10

silvercar wrote:

Go through the front door, extend immediately to right so you can have a larger hall. Put the door to the new room level and next to the start of the stairs. The way into the new room is then parallel to the entrance to the new room.

If I understand you right (sorry!) then she can't extend to the right because that is where the existing lounge is, and can't extend out to the left any further because she is then encroaching onto the driveway, which Planning/Highways won't allow, due to this minimum 4.8m length rule.

She was wanting the new door to be level with the start of the stairs, but can't do this because of the aforementioned 4.8m rule. The door has got to start at the very least where the nosing of the first tread starts, so there has definitely got to be an introduction of a landing at the bottom of the stairs somehow.

There is 4'6" space from where the front door opens at it's maximum to the start of the first riser if that helps anyone with further ideas?

Thanks again for the replies and advice so far

babyangel10

Oh hang on Silvercar - I think I've got ya!

The proposed width of the new room is 2490mm (double dutch to me though!), so do you mean that instead of taking the doorway off the stairs, she creates a slightly narrower new room and a sort of additional little hallway running parallel to the stairs, to which you would access the new room?

Gosh this is a nightmare to explain eh?!

murphydavid

I looked at your interesting conumdrum and decided that there are two posibilities.

1 Your friend needs to get the authorities to compromise on the drive space so she can build a small rectangle in front of the new extension, something like a 3ft wide porch without a door. So you can come through the front door, turn left through a new arch in what is now the outside wall (opposite the exsting door that goes from the hall into the main downstairs) go into this porch and then right through the new door into the new extension. The arch would be forward of the stairs.

or

2 At the top of the stairs there will be a landing on which you turn right into the upstairs rooms. Downstairs under this landing (maybe its an understair cupboard in the kitchen at the moment) you could make a door through into the new extension. This would mean that the focus to the new room would be at the back of the house instead of the front. So if you were in the kitchen of the exsisting house and wanted to get to the new room. As you propose at the moment you would have to walk through the lounge into the hall then into the extension. With my option 2 you could walk straight from the kitchen into the new lounge with your cup of tea.

I have made a bit of a leap in the dark about the kitchen etc but in my experiance its normally that way.

Hope this is of some use.

babyangel10

Thanks for those great ideas, unfortunately she is having a utility room at the back of the new lounge, which is to be accessed through the understairs cupboard, so that doorway is already spoken for!

And the authorities ain't budging on that 4.8m minimum drive length so that's that out too.

Thanks anyway

ormus

also one other point, there is a headroom regulation. so check that out too.

ie, theres no way you could do your proposal in my semi-det house. we have to bend our heads at the moment to go up and down the stairs.