Building regs

Slinky

We're buying a house which currently has an open tread staircase running up from the dining room to the first floor. There are 1970s style plank bannisters. We plan to replace this at some point with solid treads but will probably infill with glass.


Would building regs allow us to open up the kitchen into the dining room given there would be no door between the kitchen and the bottom of the stairs?

phill99

You would be better speaking to Building Control at your local council. They will come out and assess whether you need fire doors etc.

Owain_Moneysaver

Probably, if the house is only two storeys in total. If it's 3 storeys (eg a townhouse style or has a loft conversion) then you need the protected stair from the upper floors to the final exit.

Open bannisters and risers are permitted providing a ball of a certain size cannot pass through. The gaps can be filled with eg steel rope or rod, it doesn't have to be completely closed.

Whether not having a door on the kitchen is a good idea is a another matter. You can get hush buttons for smoke detectors if you have a problem with nuisance alarms during cooking.

manda1205

When we built our kitchen extension, we then knocked through into the old kitchen to make one open plan space, this then left our stairs open into that space. Building regs didn't care. We just had to have hard wired smoke detectors, one in the old kitchen area and one in the landing upstairs. This was just over 4 years ago.

snowcat75

Slinky wrote: »

We're buying a house which currently has an open tread staircase running up from the dining room to the first floor. There are 1970s style plank bannisters. We plan to replace this at some point with solid treads but will probably infill with glass.


Would building regs allow us to open up the kitchen into the dining room given there would be no door between the kitchen and the bottom of the stairs

Shouldn't be an issue, I'm currently on a barn conversion that downstairs is all open plan, there are 2 staircases and neither have thrown up any problems with regs.

I have also built both cases which are open tread floating, Staircases fall under part K, to which there are different rules between commercial and residential, this will refer to things like the rise and the going, and open treads are permitted but they 100mm ball mustn't be allowed to pass through any part of the case or balustrades.


Building regs are not retrospective... It would be impossible to continually change property's yearly to relate to current regs.