Attic conversions - legally calling them bedrooms

yellow hen

As per title, what are requirements required to call an attic conversion a bedroom. I've recently seen two houses, each with per many staircases to the attic and velux in the renovated space but they were not allowed to be called bedrooms. Just curious..

juke

A 'habitable room' has to comply with Building Regulations. Most attic conversions don't so they are described as being for storage use only

Often the issues are ceiling height, windows (no fire escape), stairs and lack of fire doors.

Gumbo

juke wrote: »

A 'habitable room' has to comply with Building Regulations. Most attic conversions don't so they are described as being for storage use only

Often the issues are ceiling height, windows (no fire escape), stairs and lack of fire doors.

Its worth bearing in mind that there are no building regulations with regards to room height per say. There is a ventilation calculation for the are of the floor as a % of the notational area at 1.5m and 2.4m high but again, it's a recommendation not a hard and fast rule.

From a building control and building regulation point of view, the primary concern is structure and fire safety.

Can the existing structure carry the new loads satisfactory, that's where your engineer comes in. Removing purlins, rafters etc all disrupt the load bear capacity of the house and if it's a mid terrace house, then theoretically you could be bringing your neighbours property into an area of concern.

You need to creat a new floor as most attic floor joist are for storage only and are too small to carry live loadings of everyday use.

Then you have to have a means of escap within the attic room, window or velux, it doesn't matter, as long as it conforms to TGD Part B - Means of escape.
You need a fire door from the attic room to a lobby and then the stair case. You need a mains wired smoke detector at the attic landing level and it should be interlinked to the others in the house.

The stair core needs to be a 30 minute fore protected enclosure to allow escape to the final exit. All doors that open into this enclosure must then be retrofitted with self closing devices or if replacing the door, the whole hog, a 30 minute fire door set.

The stairs should conform to Part K of the the Building Regulations but it's not as strict up to the attic especially in single family residential dwellings, but it should not be a bray head steep slope either!

There's more regs around glass etc but I haven't the energy to type every single detail out

Any specific questions, please fire away (pardon the pun )

BryanF

yellow hen wrote: »

As per title, what are requirements required to call an attic conversion a bedroom. I've recently seen two houses, each with per many staircases to the attic and velux in the renovated space but they were not allowed to be called bedrooms. Just curious..

http://www.environ.ie/en/DevelopmentHousing/BuildingStandards/PublicationsDocuments/FileDownLoad,1657,en.pdf

Gumbo

BryanF wrote: »

http://www.environ.ie/en/DevelopmentHousing/BuildingStandards/PublicationsDocuments/FileDownLoad,1657,en.pdf

You'd think I should have remembered that leaflet Brian