Starting to look into what we want to do to the house. This is where we'll be for a number decades so it needs doing right.
To give us decent space upstairs for the kids growing older we are looking into loft conversion. To give the head space in the room we would be looking at tweaking the roof. To avoid issues with leaky flat roofs, are there ways to give headroom with a tiled roof. Shallow pitch or something?
Just in the idea stage at the mo. Work to be carried out no sooner than 2023.
Ta.
Mansard roof maybe, but flat rooves aren't leaky anymore. A properly fitted fibreglass or EPDM flat roof will last and not leak.
Thanks. Pretty much what I wanted to hear. As I happens I just came across mansard conversions and although expensive look to be what we are after.
A properly fitted fibreglass or EPDM flat roof will last and not leak.
As someone who gets asked to insure firms who design and install flat roofs but declines to do so because of the costly claims, a properly fitted roof shouldn't leak but often does 🙂
thought about lowering the 1st floor ceiling instead of raising the roof (if you have enough headroom there)? If its terraced/semi altering the external street-facing roof will be difficult from a planning perspective
If its terraced/semi altering the external street-facing roof will be difficult from a planning perspective
Would depend on the street, our Victorian terraced street has pretty much no two houses with the same height / pitch roof! It appears that the houses were built in 1s, 2s or 3s with each new set built to a different design to the ones it was tagged on to. If I raised the roof 12", no one would notice. If your street had 100 idential houses in a row, then it would be a different matter.
Talk to the planners first and see if they will allow any changes to the roofline - they may notallow any, or just at the rear. As mentioned you might gain a couple of inches by fitting the new flooring supports for the loft room in between the existing ceiling supports for the current top floor.
Not sure what the minimum height rules are now, but worth doing some googling to see if you have sufficient height if you cant raise the roof. WHen we did ours it was 6 foot I think, for something like 66% of the floorspace (so you can have lower ceiling heights in the eaces etc).
Another standard technique is to leave the roof pitch as is, but push the apex back a few feet. This will give more headroom in the back of the loft.
We went through this a few years back, looked at it from every angle but the only way to actually get a decent amount of usuable space was to go big and just slap a whopping great dormer and flat roof up there. There's a been a bit of settling in the 2 years since but no leaks or any real issues.
My advise will be to 'go big 'or not bother, you may as well get the biggest possible space at the end of all the faff and expense.
Our home insurance went up about £60 a year and we've had to fit a misting system which costs £250 a year to service, but it's transformed the house,so glad we did before Covid hit and we ended up confined to barracks.
where are you located OP?
Our home insurance went up about £60 a year and we’ve had to fit a misting system which costs £250 a year to service
What is a misting system?
What is a misting system?
A type of fire suppression system:
https://plumis.co.uk/water-mist-domestic-fire-sprinkler-system
Be prepared for it to cost 3 to 4 times what you expect it should if done properly.
A type of fire suppression system:
Pretty cool!
Never heard of an insurer insisting on that for a loft conversion.
Its a way of not having fire doors if you want to go open plan
I guess it depends on what you're starting off with. If you're struggling for headroom initially then you're talking about much bigger and expensive job. If like me...you have a huge loft but the way its constructed means its a very expensive task to convert then again, it's a significant cost.
A mate of mine has just created more space in their roof space. They already were in their roof as its their second storey and built from scratch like that, but wanted more room so got a few dormers. Not flat roof but gable end, but they had the height to do that. It looks lovely and they've made a nice feature of the gable ends too. Wasn't cheap though...about £70k and that was without significant structural changes to as they were already in the loftspace. If you're not already in there then you might have additional costs to introduce structure too.
we went through the misting debate a few months back, but decided to not go open plan downstairs.
we are in the process of finishing off our dormer. it's transformed a very pokey attic conversion done by previous owners.
we've got a small ensuite up there now, and a good amount of useable space for our bedroom. prices for materials are sky high at the moment,, definitely take the possibility of continued price rises into account. I didn't and am 30% over budget so far (also to do with the nightmare of updating an old Victorian house).
