Garage Conversion - help!

SuperHanz

Hi All,

I’m after some advice. I recently bought my mother’s house I grew up in which has been in the family 31 years. We have had the same neighbours since I was a child and get on well with them. My mother has never done anything significant to the property, only patch repairs when things needed fixing.

The house is a link detached - for clarity my house has a single storey garage running the entire length of the house which is attached to next door. Our kitchen is tiny and hasn’t had anything done to it since the mid 1980s. The garage roof is a flat roof and is leaking everywhere, again has had nothing substantial done to it but is now at the end of its life.

To solve these problems we now want to convert half of the garage (the rear end) so we can make the kitchen bigger, leaving the front half still a garage and have a new roof put on the garage (either a rubber flat roof or pitched- not sure which is feasible).

There are two issues I need advice on:

1- My neighbours soil pipe comes out of his bathroom and straight down into my garage. When the toilet flushes and you’re in the garage you can hear it and did leak sewage into my garage a number of years ago. We don’t want his soil pipe in our house any more regardless of a conversion (but especially important if we got a new kitchen) so how do you go about moving it? Who’s responsibility is it?

2- If we convert the back end of our garage into a habitable room are there any implications to this? Does it formally become semi detached? Is it worth detaching our garage from his house and creating a new external wall so our house separated from the neighbours?

Thanks!

Steph1078

Hiya,
Can’t advise on the soil pipe I’m afraid but I can give you a point of view on the link detached part.
This is a marketing ploy in my opinion to call it “link detached” at all; especially when you have them all in a long line - it would be a terraced really wouldn’t it if the rooms were all converted into “rooms” rather than garages - admittedly unlikely and it’s only one wall attached rather than the whole house.
Picture my old road it was link detached all the way down the road... ours was just a garage as was next door to the right (they were the start of the line)
The next door to the left had converted their garage and extended it at the same time - which technically made it a “semi” I guess - but it was sold and described as link detached still.
Quite simply because it wasn’t extended upward as well as back the estate agent still listed it as a linked detached house.
It’s all down to how it’s marketed.
I hope this helps!

Furts

You will be responsible for moving the soil pipe, at your expense. Technically this could be difficult because you have to find somewhere else for it to drain to. Were I your neighbour I would not be agreeing to this. My stance would be why should somebody else be fiddling around with my drainage which is currently working fine?

It is likely the garage construction is unsuitable for conversion. Floor insulation, cavity walls, proper foundations and so on will all need consideration. A new construction and a proper pitched roof are the likely outcome, all subject to a design and an application for Planning and Buildings Regulations

SuperHanz

Thanks for your responses. What do you mean by new construction? We would be ripping out everything and starting again as the roof is so wet from leaking it’s on it’s last legs. We would be sound proofing and cavity walls etc and would be adhering to building regs etc.

Equally at the same time from our side why would I want someone else’s sewage flowing through my house? It’s been designed badly when the houses were built in the 1970s but needs sorting as I don’t want sewage leaking into our house again!

AndyMc.....

SuperHanz wrote: »

Thanks for your responses. What do you mean by new construction? We would be ripping out everything and starting again as the roof is so wet from leaking it’s on it’s last legs. We would be sound proofing and cavity walls etc and would be adhering to building regs etc.

Equally at the same time from our side why would I want someone else’s sewage flowing through my house? It’s been designed badly when the houses were built in the 1970s but needs sorting as I don’t want sewage leaking into our house again!

It hasn’t leaked into your house.

EachPenny

SuperHanz wrote: »

Equally at the same time from our side why would I want someone else’s sewage flowing through my house? It’s been designed badly when the houses were built in the 1970s but needs sorting as I don’t want sewage leaking into our house again!

If the pipe has been there since the 1970's when the houses were built then it is very likely it has every right to be there. If you want it moved or even altered (e.g. made less accessible) then expect to have to cover the cost of the work and don't be surprised if the neighbour objects.

The best approach would be to talk to the neighbour very nicely and see if they are agreeable to you altering the pipe routeing.

Furts

SuperHanz wrote: »

It’s been designed badly when the houses were built in the 1970s but needs sorting as I don’t want sewage leaking into our house again!

Comical! You appear to know little about building, which is why you are posting on the forum. That is fine by me - we are all here to offer suggestions. But to now claim to be a drainage expert, and qualified to pass judgement after a mysterious gap of 40 years, on drainage you have not seen, nor inspected, nor considered re-routing means you are stretching the boundaries of truthfulness!

Davesnave

If you are willing to demolish and build a new structure, you might be able to leave your neighbour's soil pipe outside this new building, but if you detach yourself from them, this will cost not only money but indoor space. You will still have to leave the pipe as accessible as it was before.

I converted my garage, which was a relatively easy process, but if I'd had to move one wall away from a neighbour it would have become much more costly and the result would have been a structure too narrow for my purposes.

It might be just as cheap for you to buy a fully detached house.

Furts

Davesnave wrote: »

If you are willing to demolish and build a new structure, you might be able to leave your neighbour's soil pipe outside this new building, but if you detach yourself from them, this will cost not only money but indoor space. You will still have to leave the pipe as accessible as it was before.

These are my thoughts too. As I see it the soil pipe comes down in the garage so by default this means the drainage is laid under the garage slab. The neighbour may not allow the drainage under the garage to be built over. If it is diverted, be that to the front or back of the garage it will still be under the garage slab area. So nothing has been gained by doing this. Hence the extension idea may have to be abandoned.

Insulating a soil pipe to give sound reduction is an everyday building concept - been around for decades. This could be a route forward.

another_casualty

Tbh, I think it’s best to just fix the garage and forgot about extending the kitchen . You’ve lived in the house a long time , and not much as been spent on it . Maybe just giving the house a revamp internally instead . ( painting /new furniture if needed / redesigned kitchen )

This way , you still have a nice home , which will be more to the way you want it , but you also have nice neighbours still . Try not to do anything that upsets them . Some things are best left.

SuperHanz

Thanks for your suggestions. I want to explore my idea further before approaching the neighbours - who would I need to contact about the pipe and responsibilities for it? Would it be the water board?

I’ve had roofers come to look at the roof as it’s in urgent need of fixing due to the bad weather. However forward planning I’d like to get feasibility, costs and a plan together to see if we can convert before doing anything but I’m not sure who I need to approach about the work involved etc! Would a reputable builder undertake everything or would I need a few different tradesmen?

Obviously the neighbours need access, my mother let them fix it when it leaked sewage into the garage a number of years ago every time they flushed the toilet which was very unpleasant. However if we were to leave the pipe as it is and extend the kitchen into the garage, I wouldn’t want an expensive kitchen suffering the same fate if it were to leak again for whatever reason.

The same neighbours did exactly the same to their house about 20 years ago and made the back end of their garage a sound proof room for their son to play the drums in so I know it can be done. It’s just the pipe worries me slightly. Our kitchen is too small to be redesigned unfortunately so we really could do with the extra space, especially as we have a huge garage that’s not all in use.

Not sure if I’m explaining myself very well so added a diagram of the layout and the red blob is where the neighbours drain pipe comes straight down out of their bathroom through our garage roof into the garage floor. It won’t let me post the link so I’ve had to put a space after the first letter... h ttps://ibb.co/fdx7ew