Blocking up a doorway/new wall (Buildings Regs/Planning Perm required?)

[Andy Jeffries]

Hi all,

We are considering removing an exterior door and blocking up the opening a bit further out.

A diagram may help make things clearer:

the Kitchen currently has an exterior door leading to the back garden and two interior doors leading to the utility room and the living/dining room.

The utility has an exterior door which leads to outside the front of the house, but there is a bit of "outside" past this door that then has a wall (part of my house) then the rest of outside. This piece of space is raised a foot off the floor, and you then step down off the property.

We would like to remove this door and brick up at the end of that wall to the house. The wall would be within our property boundaries.

I've also uploaded a photo at:

red translucent block shows where the new wall would be.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Cheers,

Andy

[Davao]

Andy. Sorry I can't be any help to you on this. But I do hope you come into some money soon and can buy some furniture. And those yellow carpets! Please!!!!

Arthur

[Andy Jeffries]

Sniff, sniff, all I can afford are some new bricks and mortar... :-(

(Inkscape default colours, forgot to change ;-) )

Cheers,

Andy

[Set Square]

I can't quite make your drawing and photo stack up. The drawing shows "Wall" extending level with the RHS of the property, but in the photo it only appears to extend for the door width. Is the idea that the white rectangle, bounded at bottom and right by Wall and Proposed Wall will be an extension to the Utility Room, with no access to Outside?

It appears to be at the front of the house - in which case you will almost certainly need planning permission. You will also need building regs approval, even if only for energy efficiency - which could present a bit of a challenge! As far as I can see, Wall is only one brick thick - with gaping holes through it - so you're going to need something better than that to meet current insulation standards!

The best advice in all such cases is to wander down to your local authority offices - arned with photos of the existing setup and rough diagrams of what you want to do, and have informal chats with a planning officer and a building inspector. They will advise you what is likely to be acceptable from a planning point of view, and what you need to do to comply with building regs.

[Andy Jeffries]

(A large "doh!" and forehead slapping sound reasonates around uk.d-i-y)

You're absolutely right. When I did the drawing I had it in mind it went to the RHS of property (from that viewpoint). It doesn't, it only goes to the door.

Correct.

We're planning on have whoever does the bricking up Proposed Wall to fill in the gaps. What sort of insulation would be required? Would it have to be two layers of brick or would one brick layer and say two layers of plasterboard be enough?

OK, thanks for that tip, I'll give them a ring in a bit.

Cheers,

Andy

[Set Square]

New build would require a thick cavity wall with the cavity full of rockwool - but this little bit isn't going to have a dramatic effect on the heat losses from the whole building. It's best to discuss it with a BCO and find out what he would consider to be acceptable.

By all means ring to find out when they're open etc. - but you won't get very far on the phone - it's far better to *go* and talk to them face to face. The planners and BCOs at my local council seem to work on some sort of rota system - so that there's always someone in the office who can talk to members of the public when they drop in.

[Andy Jeffries]

OK, ta. I thought there might be some hard and fast rules on this sort of thing, rather than down to "who you get on the day".

That's all I meant. Emailed instead.

Cool.

Cheers,

AJ

[Set Square]

Well, there probably is - but all the BCOs I have come across have been pretty reasonable and have taken a pragmatic approach to these things.

If you build a very small extension onto a large thermally inefficent house, it makes damn all difference to the overall heat losses even if the new bit has 'perfect' insulation. They know this, and if you establish a good working relationship with them, they're less likely to apply the letter of the law, jobsworth fashion.