extension wall gap/consent to build

kai666

We are planning to do a kitchen extension (single storey rear extension) in a terraced property. The two neighbouring houses already have their kitchens extended. We do not plan to utilise the neighbouring extensions’ walls as party walls. We plan to build our own kitchen extension walls on both sides.

In such case of having separate new walls, we understand from our prospective builder that there should be a 50 mm gap between our cavity wall and theirs (the neighbours). This is the distance the builder has to leave from a water protection perspective; so to allow for easy rainwater drainage.

Question: Should the 50 mm gap be explicitly stated on the drawings submitted to the Planning department, or it is not essential that this is specified. Due to the small width of such gap it is difficult to draw it on the required scale, so the drawings might look as the two walls are joined while in reality there should be this 50mm “technical” gap required from the builders’ prospective.

Our neighbours will not sign the party wall agreement until this confusion is cleared up.

Many thanks

System

Why do you not want to use their walls?
leaving a 50mm gap isn't really practical

JP08

I suspect a 0 has gone astray, or an m should be a c. 500mm / 50cm sounds far more likely.

Ant555

kai666 wrote: »

We do not plan to utilise the neighbouring extensions’ walls as party walls. We plan to build our own kitchen extension walls on both sides.

....
Our neighbours will not sign the party wall agreement until this confusion is cleared up.

What party wall agreement are you asking them to sign if its not going to be a party wall?

Hoploz

They will need to dig up to the foundations of the neighbours walls/boundaries

Gloomendoom

the_r_sole wrote: »

Why do you not want to use their walls?
leaving a 50mm gap isn't really practical

My sister-in-law has a "detached" house that has a gap of about 50mm between her house and next door's. In fact, it might be less.

From Streetview...

System

Gloomendoom wrote: »

My sister-in-law has a "detached" house that has a gap of about 50mm between her house and next door's. In fact, it might be less.

From Streetview...

snip]

not saying it can't be done, just that it's not very practical - just a nice trap for rotting leaves/small animals etc!
hadn't considered it might have been a typo! :rotfl:

Gloomendoom

the_r_sole wrote: »

not saying it can't be done, just that it's not very practical - just a nice trap for rotting leaves/small animals etc!

They haven't had any problems and they have been there a few years. The practical benefits are maximising space on the plot and there is zero noise transmission from next door.

brightontraveller

It doesn’t maximise internal space which building onto other wall would do ? It also cost more to do? Often very small distance between houses is because the house sells as detached = more money :rotfl:

kai666

the_r_sole wrote: »

Why do you not want to use their walls?
leaving a 50mm gap isn't really practical

JP08 wrote: »

I suspect a 0 has gone astray, or an m should be a c. 500mm / 50cm sounds far more likely.

Your right it's just a missing 0.

The reason for building a detached wall is because that is what the architects advised as our new roof will be at a different angle than the neighbours roof, they said it will be very difficult to built up from their wall at the different angle.

So the issue is the architects said to build a gap, but didn't put it in the drawings submitted to the council, so the neighbours say as it's not on the drawings we can't build the seperate wall, and refusing to sign the party wall agreement