Staircase question

You might start looking at "The Building Regulations 1976"

Stairs were then covered in Part H (later they moved to Part K) unfortunately it's a scratchy scanned PDF that hasn't been OCR'ed to make it searchable ... no figure of 42° leaps off the page to me, but it defines "pitch angle" so presumably it refers to that somewhere else?

There were amendments in 1978, 1981, 1983, 1985 and a complete rewrite also in 1985.

domestic pitch was was 42 deg when I started in Building control in

Was in the near of Scotand though...then again englandshire might differ but I doubt it.....

It's in "Table to Regulation H3 (Specific requirements for stairways)"

"Building or compartment of purpose group I or III"

"any stairway within a dwelling or serving exclusively one dwelling"

"C. Pitch of flight Not exceeding 42°"

It's in there on page 4320, max 42° for a stair within/serving a single dwelling, and 38° for a common stair serving multiple dwellings.

Thanks both; very useful.

I don't have immediate access to the staircase in particular so can't measure the pitch, but it is considered 'rather steep' and may require replacing. It's in a building with possible public access. I do know that in 1983 it was widened from 1m to 1.5 metres. I don't know if the pitch was unchanged at that time, but would simply widening the staircase have required changing the pitch to bring it into line with the regulation if it was steeper than 42°?

should have been 38deg

Lob me a copy if you want and I can convert it to searchable...

I believe steeper pitches are allowed to access a single (e.g. loft) room

Ive only seen it broken in a listed cottage, and it was several hundred years old. Building inspector said it wasn't safe and needed replacing with a shallower angle . Listed building inspector insisted that it was part of the listing. In the end the staircase was 'repaired' to original steepness, which since it didn't constitute a 'material change' was passed by the building AND listing inspectors!

I suppose looking at historic building regs is a bit of a minority sport, without comparing details, quite a lot was defined by 1976 that seems to be familiar from the current approved docs.

I don't need it, but if you want to OCR it for the wiki, it came from here

Thanks for the offer, but I've fond the relevant section.

I see that for an 'assembly building' (which arguably this could be classified as) the pitch should be 33°.

Although we, like many around here, have a compliant staircase leading to the fairly recent loft conversion whereas the ground/first floor staircase in this old house is pretty steep.

The treads seem normal size but have about 3" overhanging the stair below. Going up is easy, coming down takes more care, particularly getting the ball of the foot on the tread if you have larger feet.

I've seen similar - an old crofthouse with an extremely steep staircase, was being renovated. The staircase was in bad shape, and needed replacing - but _replacing_ meant needing to meet current standards, which would have made the ground floor barely usable. The joiner 'repaired' it, which was allowed. The repair involved removing, and complete rebuilding...

Triggers broom eh? :-)

I believe there are in fact three 'original' 1932 ferraris that won a given race in existence. Each one has a bit of the original in it, enough to qualify as 'original'. Makes a total mockery of listing regulations, really. Well i used the original nail that held it to the wall, so its 'repaired' innit?>

Ive been restoring some blown monitor speakers. Most of the problems are glue failing in the units. and foam surrounds turning to dust.

Ive reglued one voice coil to a tweeter diaphraghmm replaced both mid range units, apart from an adaptor to fit the original faceplates, and both bass units have new surrounds, centre domes and spiders and ONE has a new voice coil but not the other.

Are they original? Sadly not, but they sound nearly as good, and the cases are nice.

Ok, included it here:

Thanks John. OOI, what OCR software do you use?

yes that works, you really have to search for "42°" because just searching for "42" matches all the page numbers in the 4200 to 4299 range!