Making a door from utility area into garage

[Chris Hogg]

When we modernise my late mother's bungalow, we would like to make a door from a utility area / lobby into the garage, which currently only has external access through a standard up-and-over door.

I'm aware that the floor level in the garage must be 100mm lower than the lobby floor, which it is at least, and that the door needs to be a fire door and have intumescent foam seals in case of fire in the garage, but discussing it with friends yesterday they said they had wanted to do something similar in a house they've recently bought but were told by their builder they couldn't because of the possibility of fumes, CO etc diffusing into the main house if someone is running a car engine in the garage. Something to do with building regs. But our existing property has almost exactly what we want to do to my late mother's property, done in about 1985.

So have the regs changed, or was their builder talking bollocks?

[Chris Hogg]

Thanks Phil. That's rather as I suspected. I'll let the friends know, but it may be too late as I think all their building work has been completed and I doubt they'd want the mess now. But at least we can go ahead with my late mother's property.