A Re roof is when all the tiles are replaced with new tiles that match the exsisting surroundings and adjoining neigbours. (this picture is a great example of a good re roof compared to the adjoining roofs)

When having the loft converted it is usually a good time to consider having a re roof, especially if the old tiles are on their final years. Whilst the scaffolding is up and the tiler is already on site, it is really worth paying the extra even though the loft is costing you alot already, to stretch to pay for something that needs doing will never be something you will live to regret. The last thing you will want is to not go ahead with the re roof and in 1 or 2 years time have to pay 3,4 or 5 times the amount you were quoted when the loft was being done. Especially if water damage has ruined your new bedroom and after ringing the builder or loft company you find out they wont pay out on your guarentee because you were advised to have a re roof at the time of build. This is where the costs may get a bit nasty.

HOWEVER always get at least two opinions about a re roof, and even two quotes would be a good idea…

Your builder however nice he is could be telling a few porkies about the roof so do be careful, and dont waste money on a job that doesn’t need doing.

Cost’s for re roof on a standard mid terrace house at 5m wide, if you deal direct with the roofer could cost you around £1500 to £1700 to tile and battern the front slope. The rear slope is normally included in the price of the conversion but make sure before going ahead.

 This picture just shows what a house will look like if corners are cut. You can see that the builder has just changed the tiles that have shattered when installing the new Velux’s. For the sake of £800 (approx) the front of this house could be looking brand new and possibly the best on the street. Instead it now looks the worst… 

Here are a few roof’s that have had lofts done but didn’t need re roofs so i thought you could compare the quality of your tiles to these pictures, and make you own mind up on needing a re roof. PLEASE SEEK PROFESSIONAL ADVISE ON THIS MATTER.

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Fire Doors
Fire resisting doors also known as FD20/30’s are vital to contain smoke in a room for a sufficient time for you to become aware of the fire and able to evacuate the building safely and efficientley.

There must be 1/2 hour fire resitant partitions to separate the landing from the rooms in the new loft conversion, and the doors around the stairs must be fire check doors, and be fitted with door closers.
The code which is numbered either 20 or 30 of the fire door defines the time span of how long that door will survive in the case of a fire. The doors rating will be decided by your building inspector, and will be on your plans for the builder.

An FD20 is a fire door that lasts for 20 minutes in the case of a fire. normally 40mm thick, solid or compressed wood and will also need a door closer near the hinge so that the door will close automatically.

This is a picture of a door closer that would need to be installed on the back of all the doors around the stairs to meet building regs. 

An FD30 is a 30 minute fire door and from the end of May 2007, word of mouth between Building Inspectors is that all doors around the stairs will have to now be upgraded to FD30’s.

This is not good news for all the owners of beautiful Victorian and Edwardian houses with their original doors that are part of the history and character of their house… 

We believe that there will be a special paint that the existing doors can be covered in to give them the fire protection to meet the new fire regs. For more details ask your builder or Building control officer.

This regulation also goes for any glass in existing doors around the stairs, it will need to be replaced with either a wired glass, the sort of glass that is found in most schools. (click on the picture to enlarge the sample) This is the cheapest sort of fire glass at around £150 per m2 but looks quite cheap. The second grade of fire glass is called Pyroglass and even though it’s more expensive at around £300 per m2 it looks like real glass, It is basically the same glass that is used in oven facias. You buy all the fire glass made to measure and fitting would cost around £50 or so direct with your builder. You must really love your existing doors to take up this option…

Unfortunately this also means any glass panels above doors including fan lights, glass blocks or any sort of gap between a room and stairs will all have to be blocked up permanently either by plasterboard and plaster or fire glass.

If the glass is fire proof it will have a fire proof rating stamp in one of the bottom corners etched with the British Standered BSI kite mark (see picture) triangle. Next to the Kite mark will be an ISO number similar to this BS EN ISO 12543. This specifies the grade of the glass that has been installed. This will all be checked by the inspector before it’s passed off. Visit British Standards at www.bsistandards.co.uk for more infomation.   

This doesn’t effect doors that are not directly onto the stair area e.g between the lounge and dinning room. These doors can be normal glass.

Staircase Enclosure

A full staircase enclosure is needed from the new loft room/s, down to the front door to provide the first means of escape should a fire start in your house.

The stair enclosure is a major part of the fire regs, and to get all your building regulation certificates at the end of the build you will need the fire escape signed off by your inspector.

This enclosure is designed so if a fire happened there will be an escape from the new bedroom in the loft right down to the ground floor without going through any other living room that could be on fire.

If you have an open plan ground floor this will need enclosing to meet with all fire regulations.

There are 3 ways of doing this:

1. One way is to put a wall from the bottom of the stairs to the front door. As this is classed as part of the new building works being done to the house, the door into the lounge or kitchen (or where ever the wall has divided) this door will have to be a fire door normally called an FD20.

2. The second way is to put a temporary wall in to meet fire regulations and make it look like it’s permanent and then take it down once it’s been signed off by the inspector. I don’t agree with this solution as the reg’s are there for a reason but lot’s of people do take it down. 

Please note that this could effect your home insurance and invalidate your policy so please do be careful.

Also when you sell your house and the survey is being done on your property it will come up as a major issue on your buyers report. This could affect the sale of the property as well.

3. The third way is to install a fire sprinkler system. It is a fantastic option but is the most expensive. If the stairs go up to the 1st floor in an area where you can’t really put a wall this may be the only option the Building control will allow you to do.

Please note that you cannot knock a wall down around the stairs making it open plan after applying for building regs approval. The Building control will only make you rebuild it which will just be a pain and a waste of money. I suggest that if you want to remove a wall between the stairs and a lounge or kitchen, you have your builders do this before involving the building control. You will have to make it look like its been like this for a while (a year or two) and then you should get away with this. You will still need to have fire sprinklers to pass the loft. If you try to ask for sprinklers when you have a perfectly good wall there already, it will ruin any chance you haveof having it removed in the future as your building control officer will now be aware.    

Rescue Windows
A window should be set on the front of the roof to be used as a means of escape the most commonly used window is an M08 Velux (see Velux post for sizes).

The size of the window when open should be at least 550mm wide x 800mm high. And this needs to be in the new room NOT on the landing, this is because it is meant as a means of escape if the stairs and landings become filled with smoke.

There should be enough space for the fire brigades ladder direct from the ground and pitched at a 3 in 1 angle.

Smoke Alarms
Smoke alarms should be fitted in the stairway, one in the hallway, one in the landing and one in the new loft conversion, this is the minimum standard. They should be mains powered, and they can be connected to the lighting circuits, that way there are no batteries to replace.

Staircases
The stairs are where most accidents happen in the home, so it’s important that the new stairs are safe, and the existing stairs are not made unsafe. At least 2.0m headroom is needed over the exsiting stairs. The new stairs headroom can be reduced which might allow the flight to fit under a hipped roof.

The landing should be the same width as the stairs, and there is no minimum width for the stairs, a width of 750-800mm works well, and doors must open away from the stairs.

The New Loft
If the dormer is less than 1.0m from the party wall the side of the dormer must provide 1/2 hour fire resistance from inside and outside

Eaves ventilation, at least 25000mm squared per linear metre, equivalent to a continiuos 25mm ventilation gap.
Ridge ventilation, at least 5000mm squared per linear metre, equivalent to a continious 5mm ventilation gap.

A 50mm air gap must be left above the insulation, so the roof joists need to be at least 150mm deep, and because rafters are usually 100mm deep, they need 50mm battening under them. This is because water vapour rises through the ceilings and can condense out, above the insulation which can cause structural damage and unsightly stains.

Planning permission will need to be obtained from your local authority prior to building work if the property in question does not have any permitted development allowance as this has been used up, or your permitted development rights have been removed.

To apply for plannng permission you will need to either go online to the Planning Portal, or download a copy of their application forms from their local site e.g. www.merton.gov.uk.
If you are applying onlne via the Planning portal you will need to attach a copy of your drawings in Pdf format or you could post them seperately along with a cheque for £135.00 (on the portal ou can pay by credit card). You will also require a design statement, you can ask your architect to do this for you, if you are writing this yourself you can ask the council for some guidelines about what exactly they require from you from the design statement.

Once the application has been received by the council they will then check the application and make sure it is valid. Once it has been made valid it will be given a reference number, a case officer, and a decision date. You can call the planning department to get this information. Some loft companies will do this for you, and follow the application up on your behalf. If you are doing this yourself the application will be given 8 weeks to be decided. Within this time i would contact the case officer and find out when they will be undertaking their site visit. Try to be there so you can discuss the application with them briefly to find out what their views are. Most councils will probably not give you much information until the decision date, but it’s always worth a try. I would advise you try to find out as early as possible if they are happy with the application, if they are find out if they will be recommending the application for approval. If they are not happy ask them to give you the opportunity to submit amendments. Be careful if you are in the Richmond Borough, alot of their case officers are extremely difficult to deal with, and will more often than not not take your phonecalls, and if they are not happy with the application will just refuse the permission rather than give you a chance to amend something that could be simple.

This will be very frustrating if you have a time scale you need to stick to. As you will need to do all the neccessary amendments and then re-submit a whole new application, taking a further 8 weeks.

You could call the case officer every couple of weeks to find out what stage the application is at, and if they have made any decisions yet.

A hip to gable is a type of construction that is used on most semi-detaches and end of terrace houses.

These houses usually have three slopes (ignore the velux in the front slope as it could be there just to let natural light in their dusty loft space) Unconverted. 

To maximise the loft space the ridge board is extended to the side wall and the front slope is continued and the gable is built up in either tile, render, pebble dash or brickwork (see picture)

As it’s all built in a new construction a window is normally installed for extra light. Nine times out of ten the window in the gable is normally over the stairs or new landing area but this obviously depends on the exsting house design.  

The picture below shows a gable with a port hole window installed. This house is located at the end of a street so the finish was quite important. If there was another house right next door i wouldn’t normally suggest to spend the extra money on the porthole window and just install a standerd Upvc / Sash Window. You can also see a red brick coarse around the primeter of the window which again is only worth the extra money when you get the privilege of the side of your house being on display. 

(click to enlarge)

The Guild of Master Craftsman represent lots of different professions and it’s not just Loft builders who are members. There main aim is to support and promote the excellence of their tradsmen, their tradesmen include Bricklayers to electricans, Plumbers to plasterers, Thatch roofers through to stone macers. Supporting everyone makes the tradsmen strive for excellence but with monitored stardards to keep the Guilds code of pratice in order.

The guild of master Craftsman represents skill, quality service in all their members professions.

to check out more visit  www.guildmc.com.

The Country’s leading Rooflight company.

The mechanics behind the design make Velux world class from their standard M04 roof window to their amazing roof terraces and cabrio balcony systems.

Every loft (unless over 7m high) has to have a window from the front of the house as a means of escape, the code Velux use is called an GGL-M08.
The first part “GGL“ is the code in which velux know what family of window you are wanting to buy.
The second part “M08” is the size of the window you are looking for. 

To help here is a list of codes from Velux, the second part are the sizes.

M08 780mm x 1400mm (Fire escape) this window has to be top hung and not centre hung as this is the emergency window.

C02 550mm x 780mm This size is perfect for over the staircase. The first dimension given is the width of the window and the second is the length.

C04 550mm x 980mm This window is slightly longer by 20mm and is the same width as the C02 (above)

M04 780mm x 980mm This is the best selling Velux window. A good size and comes either top hung or centre hung.

M06 780mm x 1180mm Slightly longer and a bit more expensive than the M04.

S06 1140mm x 1180mm This is a monster of a window. One of the biggest roof lights Velux manufacture.

For the first part of the code you will have to order the Velux brochure and decide what style and finish you want to choose.  

Check out www.velux.co.uk to discover all the ranges of roof lights and roof terraces available.

You will find that most building companies are members of the Federation of Master Builders.

The FMB is the building industry’s largest trade organisation, representing over 13,000 small and medium size companies in the UK.

The federation promotes standards of excellence, and helps its members to continually improve levels of business performance and customer service. For Builders to join the FMB they need to pay an annual fee and as long as they dont get too many complaints in a year, then there will not risk of losing their membership. I say too many complaints because they will let one or two be forgotten due to an average builder/customer disagreement which can’t really be prevented. This is not perfect for the customer but if that company have ten or more complaints in one year the FMB will investigate and it could jeopardise the builders membership for good.

You can check all the expelled Members out @ www.fmb.org.uk.

“I know of one or two companies who have lost their FMB due to lying to clients saying that they were inculding an FMB Masterbond Warrenty in with their contract price, Filing out the all the paperwork in front of the customer and then throwing it all away without sending it to the Federation.”

An FMB 10 year Masterbond Warrenty is where your builders work is covered by the federation so if there are any structural problems within that period the FMB will cover any costs for materials and labour by dealing with another FMB Member.

All FMB members must have a proven track record and good business standing, aswell as being carefully vetted before they are allowed to join. They are also required to adhere to a strict code of practice which is like a set of guidelines that they have to agree to. The FMB Masterbond Warrenty normally costs around 1.5% of the overall contract between you and your builder. For more information about the FMB Please go to www.fmb.org.uk.

Just check out some of these lofts…..

What do you think???

click on the picture to leave a comment or enlarge

Not bad, Above all its been designed to match the rest of the property with good use of tiles that really blend in well.
The windows could have been better aligned with the ones on the 1st floor, but with out seeing the inside layout its hard to comment on window decision as it might work well for maximum light in the bedroom and shower room. 

click on the picture to leave a comment or enlarge

WELL!!! What can i say… Awful! who ever bulit this loft should be ashamed of their craftmanship and so should the architect. The lead work has left something to be desired and the guttering is one of the worst designs I have ever seen. Even the Velux hasn’t even been fixed into the roof properly. If you click on the picture to enlarge it you can see all the tiles comming off around the velux. If you do choose a builder with these standards or when the builder asks for his final balance with nothing but satisfaction on his face. GOOD LUCK… Remember….. “If you pay Peanuts, Expect Monkeys!”

click on image to leave a comment or enlarge

GOOD. Both these front Pitched dormers have been designed well and blend in fantastically with the rest of the house. You can see that the roofs of the dormers are matched to the same angle as the front gable window making it all tie in nicely (The front gable is the cream triangle in the bottom left of the picture with a window inside for people who dont know). Very good job indeed. It almost looks like the house was built with the dormers already on the property.