A “Tin hat” is the scaffolder’s name for a temporary roof structure.

It is part of the scaffolding that protects the whole roof when exposed to many weather conditions that your house could face when having a loft conversion done. By laying long corrugated aluminium sheets down across the whole area of the roof it protects the house from all potential problems like rain and snow. It’s made of Aluminium so it’s light and easy to carry around but i still cant imagine this being an easy job for a team of scaffolder’s. The picture above shows just how high the scaffolding has to be built up before the tin hat can be laid.

The costs for a tin hat would usually be around £800 to £1000 extra on top of the standard price of scaffolding which will already be included in your quotation/estimate (This price based on a semi detached house @ 5.5m wide)

For bigger jobs that are having major construction works done on or for jobs that the main roof will be open for a considerably long time on is definitely worth paying the extra for. Even if it is just for the peice of mind.

On a detached house the cost could be as much as £2,500 to £3,500 extra. Only because all four of the scoffolding sides will have to be extended up and reinforced over the entire roof area which is a very big job.

Winter would also be a wise time to pay the extra for a tin hat. Please speak to at least two professionals for advise on this before Deciding to pay for this option.

The majority of fitters/builders who build lofts will always prefer to use a Tin hat. Not only does it speed the job up, it also makes their life so much easier instead of trying to guess the next days weather conditions. At night they also know they wont be receiving a dreaded phone call from you at four in the morning saying there’s water coming through the ceilings because they didn’t waterproof the roof properly.

When a tin hat isn’t being used, tarpaulin is the standard product that is. It is perfect for smaller lofts or for doing lofts in the Spring/Summer months. Normally the builder will be able to use tarpaulin to protect against showers and within a 10 minute down fall have the whole roof watertight.

If any water damage are made to the inside of your house as the work is being done the builder should offer to put right any damages made, in the worst cases it should also be covered by their public liability insurance. Do check all this with your company/builder before the work commences and its too late…

When having a loft conversion the scaffolding normally goes across the front of the property for access and storage of materials and to the rear of the property for protection and safety when building the dormer / mansard. When having just a Velux conversion it is standard practice just to have scaffolding to the front because nothing apart from Veluxs will be going into the rear and would just be a waste of money (your money).

The front scaffolding is erected so the builders can work in and out of a hole in the roof without having to come through the house with major construction materials such as steel RSJ’s and heavy timbers. Going in and out of the roof should last at least 3/4 of the total build time as the stairs are the last part to go in as part of the first fix process. This means that until the stairs are in you shouldn’t have anyone coming in and out of your front door or through your house.

Scaffolding Dimensions

The scaffolding at the front is around 5-6 ft from the front wall so most of the heavy materials will fit on there in one crane lift. The scaffolding should also be built timber blocks to protect the path or drive way.

If your house is a semi detached or a end of terrace you will need scaffolding down the side to protect the tradesmen when building the loft. It should only be around 1ft or 3 planks wide though so you don’t need to much width between houses.

If you don’t own the land down the side of the property or you live in a flat and worried about the freeholder or neighbours there should be a clause in your lease or contract to state that any roofing or structural works to be done on your property allow you access the their land to access your roof i.e scaffolding use. Please check with your solicitor for further details and legal advise before going round to your neighbours demanding access. Or you could just try asking them nicely!!!

Also if down the side of your house there is an alley, small drive or access point to yours or other neighbours garages the scaffolding company will be able to bridge the alley with reinforced scaffolding so everyone will still be able to use the access point. This would cost roughly £800 extra on top of the normal scaffolding costs and is based on an 8 week build time.

If you have a conservatory, this should be boarded over by the scaffolders with some sort of ply board or chip board so if any debres falls from the loft onto your extension or conservatory it will be fully protected. It is always good to check your company or builders liability insurance policy just to make sure that the outside of you house is completely covered by the insurance company or have in writing that your builder will put right any damages that could potentially be made.

If you live on the main road or red route (in London) the council will have to be informed, and the scaffolding will have to be netted and a shoot will need to be used to get the rubbish into the skip. If you are concerned about security an alarm can be fitted to the scaffolding at an extra cost of around £200.

If you are on a red route the council will need to be informed as they may need to close the road in order for a crane to lift the materials onto the scaffolding. This is so all the emergency services can be informed and usally takes around 1 months waiting time. Also if your road is not a red route but it is less than 20 ft wide, it will also need to be closed for the crane. Both of these examples cost around £1500 depending on what local authority you are in but please do check.

The flat roof of a dormer is designed with a slight tilt so the water will run off the roof instead of sitting on top of the roof and cause long term damage. It is normally layered three times with a good quality green mineral felt. The felt comes in 600mm width rolls and when laid it is overlapped every 300mm over the whole roof then laid the opposite way overlapping 300mm again three times over to prevent any water damage. The underside of the felt is coated with a sticky tar which is heated together by a flame torch to stop any water getting into the loft. As this standard option is using fire (hot deck) to bond the felt together it is very dangerous and must be done by a professional flat roofer and not just done by a (tiler) roofer. Once the felt is laid on the roof a hot bitchaman is then applied over the final surface, completely sealing the area for around 17 to 20 years. This option will then need to be re done and could cost around £1500 to £2000 to have scaffolding erected and a new layer of felt laid by a professional flat roofer.

CHECK WITH YOUR COMPANY/BUILDER WHAT IS BEING USED ON YOUR ROOF AND IS THE ROOFER A PROFESSIONAL FLAT ROOFER.

The other option is to have a GRP ROOFING SYSTEM

Roof Domes are fantastic to give the stair area natural light down the new stair case and to light up the existing staircase too. In some houses the stairs may come up onto the outside wall anyway and a window can be fitted instead but for all those mid terraces where the stairs come up in the middle of the house and there is no way of having a window… A light dome is the answer. the problem with a dome is that it goes into the flat roof so it is hard to clean unless you put a ladder up from the outside which believe me at that height is a scary thing to be doing…! You can buy self cleaning ones that are chemical based glass and are shaped so the wind and rain help keep it clean but even then you will still need to hand clean it once a year or so. It is really worth the hassle of cleaning though because the difference between a loft without stair light and one with is completely different. One without often feels like a walking into a dark cave.

You can also get internal opening domes which i personally don’t like as they are designed to be built into the flat roof, so just remember to close it at night or when you go out otherwise you might be coming home to a very wet house. You don’t really need ventilation on the stairs anyway, its only purpose is for light so really its just another way of getting a little extra cash out of you if you ask me. Also if you go for an opening dome, in 1-2 years the rubber seal may start to deteriorate due to the weather so try and avoid.

Always ask your Architect/Builder about roof domes, some lofts wont need one due to the design of the house and some lofts will be able to have a velux instead…

Roof domes normally come in three different sizes 600 x 600mm, 900 x 900mm and 1100 x 1100mm. The cost normally relates to the size, 600 x 600 @ £600, 900 x 900 @ £900 and 1100 x 1100 @ £1100. Normally these costs would including fitting but are only rough estimates of my previous experience. Make sure the chosen dome comes with a full 10 year guarantee as once installed it will be part of the flat roof.

Discrete and practical. This is the best solution to use if your new toilet in the en-suite shower room is too far away from that black 4″ pipe called a soil pipe and is normally located near your existing bathroom on the out side wall.The word macerate means to soften, break and pump the excrement from your new toilet to the soil pipe. This is done under pressure a bit like an airplane toilet and if you buy a cheap macerater it will sound like that too.

Saniflo’s system liquefies the waste along with the toilet paper and chops it all into a fine slush whilst pumping it through a new 22mm pipe untill it reaches the soil stack.

This system now allows consumers/architects to design the lofts however they want without the hassle of maximum distances between the soil pipe and proposed toilet/shower room.

There not perfect though, the sound of a macerater isn’t pleasant and it is always best to try and avoid them if possible.

If a builder say’s he will do a deal on cash to avoid the VAT…BEWARE!!! even though at first it might sound tempting to save £4,000 to £5,000 off the price. If he/they have said it to you they would have definitely said it to other clients. This means that the builder/company is a risk to you and your property.

The VAT are all over this industry and are closing companies down all over the country because of VAT fraud. If this happens to you and your chosen builder during or after the build, it won’t just be the builder who will be fined, you will have to pay an extra 17.5% on top of the “build price” and a heavy penalty. This is because there is no proof of the “build price” because you have paid cash, it will often be a heavier penalty decided by a crown court, a criminal record and possibly even a 6 month imprisonment sentance depending on the size of the building job.

IS IT REALLY WORTH THE RISK !!!

I have been told that alot of laundered money is going into lofts at the moment, where people are buying lot’s of houses legitimately and filtering laundered money through the tradesman direct avoiding all the VAT, claiming they built the loft themselves and selling their houses for a huge profit of just pure clean money.

Just think about your actions first, with cash you have no come back on the builder if any thing goes wrong. All he has to do is deny he built your loft, and you can’t do anything, it’s not like you can take him to court.

Now weigh all these negatives with one simple solution…

CHOOSE A COMPANY WHO ARE SAFE, ETHICAL AND MORALLY BASED. A COMPANY WHO PAY ALL THEIR VAT AND ARE PROUD OF IT. IF THEY’RE A LITTLE MORE EXPENSIVE IT SHOULDN’T MATTER TOO MUCH BECAUSE YOU’RE PAYING INTO THE COMFORT OF THEM BEING AROUND IN THE YEARS TO COME IF THERE IS A PROBLEM WITH YOUR JOB.

After all a 10 year guarantee isn’t worth that much once the builders out of business and unfortunately have been closed down…

There is probably equity in your property, is the cash route really the right way to go?

Pre 1949 was after the second world war the local councils started collecting plans, and maintaining a database of the properties in their borough so they could find out at anytime what extensions were done when, what designs they were allowing to be done, and even though at the time weren’t very strict had the control to say what and wasn’t aloud to be built.

Anything before “Pre” 1949 that even though may look like an add on extension, can’t actually be proven by the council that it was so they decided to allow all extensions built before 1949 to be part of the existing house.
This means all of those houses will still have their full permitted development rights as well as their “existing extension” A very good situation to be in when wanting to extend your house because you can also make deals with the councils with what you want to achieve, and make it look like because the house will be well over extended which equates to angry neighbors that the council wont want to deal with. So It just gives you that little bit on the council which helps alot when gaining planning permission…

You can usually do alot of work to your property without getting planning permission. Here are a few points on what you can do but please CHECK FIRST.

1. As mentioned in other “Certificate of lawfulness” blogs you can do dormers/ Dormer windows as long as they’re below the ridge height, not on the front roof slope and under your 50 or 70 cubic metre limit for extending the house. CHECK FIRST to make sure there are no hidden extensions that you didn’t know about as it could cost you dearly in the long term…

2. Aerials, up two slandered sizes are allowed either satellite dishes, TV aerials or similar equipment. (Except large communal dishes) Please CHECK FIRST as other criteria may apply.

3. Oil storage tanks holding less than 3,500 litres, and less than 3 metres high. They also have to be placed either in line or behind the front wall of the house.

4. Gates, Walls or Fences to the front of the property under Permitted Development have to be less then 1 metre high next to a road used by vehicles and allowed to be 2 metres high every where else.

5. Garages less than 5 metres from the house count as an extension. so the whole garage will have to be taken into account. If the garage was built at the same time as the house or built pre 1949 then the council will class the garage as an existing structure. If the garage is more than 5 metres from the house then it will be classed as a shed.

6. Sheds, Greenhouses and Garages (see above) are more than 5 metres from the house will be classed as permitted development. This is only if they are built 3 metres high (4 metres from the ridge height if it is a sloped roof) and if the structure is covering less then 50% of the garden.

7. New Windows (including Velux roof lights in the front slope) and Doors to the house are aloud to be maintained and painted or replaced but please CHECK to make sure you’re not living in a listed building.

8. Porches to the front of the property less than 3 square metres in floor area, no more then 3 metres high and more than 2 metres from a footpath or public road.

9. Block paving or Hard standing to the front of the house .

PLEASE NOTE THAT OTHER CONSENTS MAY BE NEEDED SUCH AS BUILDING REGULATIONS OR IF YOUR HOUSE IS A LISTED BUILDING OR IN A CONSERVATION AREA. OCCASIONALLY MORE RESTRICTIVE RULES DO APPLY IN SOME COUNCIL BOROUGHS SO PLEASE DO CHECK FIRST.

Permitted development is an allowance in which you can extend your property without having to achieve planning permission.

For a detached or semi-detached property an allowance of 70 cubic metres is allowed in total (only 50 cubic meters of the 70 are allowed for the loft)

And for a terrace or end of terrace an allowance of 50 cubic metres is allowed in total (only 40 cubic meters are allowed in the loft.)

e.g If you lived in a semi detached that already has a rear extension of around 30 cubic metres. This property would have 40 cubic metres left for the loft conversion. If the rear extension was only 18 cubic metres then you would still have the total amount of 50cu metres to use for the loft.

If you lived in a terrace house with an extension of 20 cubic metres then you would have 30 cubic metres left for the loft.

Please note that a listed building or a conservation area has it’s permitted development rights completely removed, and will always need planning permission.

Summary of changes in new approved document B, Volume 1 Dwelling houses in which will affect building a loft conversion.

This will become a major problem for the Loft conversion industry and for the customers wanting to convert there lofts.

You can read my fire regs post to see how the regs stand at the present date (pre April 7th 2007) but for every one who hasn’t or wont have time to serve the initial notice to the local authority before 7th April, will have to now build the loft to the new approved Document B.

These fire regs have been divided into two Volumes; Volume 1 covers Dwelling houses which is for houses, and Volume 2 is for every thing else including flats.

New Provisions that have been introduced are as follows:

The rescue window at the front of the house normally called the Velux M08 emergency velux has now been considered impractical. This window was designed for fire fighters to erect a ladder from the outside to rescue you in case of a fire. Now its known as impractical and unsuitable. In some peoples minds this will be a good thing as once its installed it is very low to the floor of the loft. This becomes a safety hazzard in itself due to infants or small children being able to open the window so high (around 5m high on average) and could fall out.

But when there’s a good point with the regs you can almost definitely expect something else to now be 10 times worse.

All the doors that divide the stairscase from living rooms (habitable rooms not including w.c’s, bathrooms or shower rooms) will need to be replaced with rated FD20 Fire doors.

This will be a nightmare for all those original Victorian and Edwardian doors that are part of the original character of the house. What’s been designed is a special fire paint that will upgrade your original doors to this new standard.

Self closing devices are no longer needed on all the doors because the government know that owners are removing them because children where constantly trapping fingers and/or the automatic closers were becoming annoying to live with. And so once removed the regulation was ineffective.

This is why FD20’s are now essential.

The next ammendment is in open plan ground floors of private dwellings, the area will need to be enclosed (which is how the old document stands now) or you will need to provide sprinklers on the ground floor and separate the stairs at first floor level to provide a suitable escape from a window on the first floor in the case of a fire on the ground floor.

Smoke alarms are now required to all circulation spaces on all floors and will all have to be mains wired with a battery back up.

If you want to avoid changing all your doors or avoid painting them with a thick coat of fire paint to upgrade them, make sure you either start work on site or serve your initial building notice to your local authority on or before the 6th of April 2007.

If you do, this means you will be able to still build under the old approved document B regulations if it is what you want to do…

See our Building regs Category for more deatils.