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Thanks for the info. So we're not completely open plan, we still have most of the corridor but no door to the kitchen and a double wide opening into the rear reception room. We already have wired smoke and heat alarms in the kitchen and hallways and would rather have them in all rooms than switching to fire doors. The only unknown is the downstairs and this 'Fire Corridor' rule. Will have a look into these mist systems and see if I can get hold of a building control inspector to sound them out on what the options might be.
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motman
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It is likely that the walls to the staircase and means of escape will meet the required rating. Likewise, doors to comply with Building Regs will only need to be 20min rated - pretty much any unglazed door will achieve that.
Typically sprinklers are used where people have opened up the ground floor plan and don't want to reintroduce the removed walls. Your plan is much easier to make comply.
EstelleGetty
We have open plan ground floor. The key thing is whether you still have the hallway to give a protected corridor between the bottom of the stairs and the exit, or the stairs just open into the open plan area.
We have the latter, so our options were (1) put the hallway wall back in, or (2) a mist/sprinkler system to provide a virtual protected corridor. (Or more dodgy (3), put the hallway back in, get sign off and remove it again - not for us but seems to be a common approach round here)
We went for a mist system: costs etc as at 2019 are in this post https://www.lfgss.com/comments/15713550/ . Plus we also had to reinstate a wall and fire door between the living area and kitchen
We got an L-shape conversion with one room and bathroom on a small Victorian terrace.
Builders quote for the build, electricals, plastering, bathroom plumbing and installation but not the bathroom fixtures:
£35K + vat for the basic work
£3K + vat for roof replacement - needed doing so made sense to get it done at the same time
What we actually paid:
42K + vat (50.4K with VAT) to the builders - extra cost was replacing the main beam which was too bowed give the headroom (they warned us upfront that was a risk)
4.2k for the mist system, firedoor etc (excludes redecoration which we still have not done... so if you want to see how disruptive the the mist system installation is I can do some pics)
5K for the bathroom fittings and tiling
2.5K for carpets and decoration
So basically 64K all in including a new roof, mist system and decoration, North London terrace 2019 prices.