Owning your own home

Have they not all been chopped up into flats? Might explain things

Tell me about it.

Check Wooster and Stock’s website, it’s on there

Ooh, get you.

Recent loft conversion? I think you need fire rated doors if you get a loft done which might mean they were forced to bin their original doors and unfortunately replace them all on the cheap with what you saw.

Maybe

I'm having to install a mister in my house so I can remove a wall and a fire door

Anyone had a driveway done and can recommend a North London based company?
Need a bit of landscaping doing I've had a couple of eye-watering quotes.

mister

I thought you were the man of the house etc.

Don't believe we've had this one yet...

https://uniquepropertycompany.co.uk/property-results/for-sale/converted-watertower-winchmore-hill/

Am struggling to understand how someone could live there despite not being able to bath or shower without assistance.

"the house has been loved & looked after"

Minus the "looked after". And possibly minus the "loved".

You can almost smell the damp from here.

When I had my loft conversion done the choice was to fit a hard wired smoke alarm in every single room in the flat or replace the old doors with fire doors.

It's this, I think, and I guess I'm not up to speed on the regs. Can't see why that would trigger a 'fuck your place up with awful, useless doors that just get propped open anyway' reg.

Seems mental.

The old, lovely doors were in the shed. @Hovis

To be fair they do hint it's a bit of wreck in the description.

Amazing though

fuck your place up with awful, useless doors that just get propped open anyway

You can get nice fire doors made but they're spenny.

Internal domestic fire doors no longer require closers the regs were changed a couple of years ago. Basically too many little kids were getting fingers trapped and for once the powers that be changed the regs sensibly rather than making everyone fit those fucking hideous finger savers you see in restaurants etc.

We have fire doors as three story, just have intumescent strips which aren't too bad, and the doors are nowhere near as bad as they used to be.

Presume fire door rule for three stories isn’t retrospectively applied as I’ve seen plenty of loft conversations that do not have fire doors.

Also this is damp of some kind?

Not uncommon I know.

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We have that, so we didn't need to reinstate a hallway wall in our very tiny terrace house when we got the loft done.

Anecdotally, everyone else seems to put up a stud wall, get BC signoff then take it down again.

Presume fire door rule for three stories isn’t retrospectively applied as I’ve seen plenty of loft conversations that do not have fire doors.

Quite common to install cheap and ugly fire doors for BC signoff then swap back and sell the fire doors on on ebay . Anecdotally.

This is why we can have nice things!

Also this is damp of some kind?

Looks like it.

My money is on a few tonnes of rubble & general crap under the suspended floor, breaching the DPC, that they have covered in a nice non-breathable laminate. And any air-bricks have been covered up too.

re: Fire doors - You can get away with none if you do things like installing a must / fire repression system (Or just say that you are going to on the plans...).

You only need them on the protected stairway too, not necessarily on all doors.

Yeah the laminate made me chuckle

I'm having to install a mister in my house so I can remove a wall and a fire door

We just didn't bother doing this. When we sell we'll put in back in if the buyer wants, but plan A will be persuading them that it's much better without (which it is).

There are plenty of exits so it doesn't worry us.

fire repression system

Incidentally if anyone needs one of these I know a good guy.

Didn't see this post.

Around ours, it appears to be common for building control to sign off on spec of mist systems, rather than the actual install.

Worth having a chat with people around you that have had conversions done.

(I may haver spent a few weeks just knocking on doors and being shown around complete strangers' houses.)

Not that I am suggesting you do get sign off and forget about the install.

Not that I am suggesting you do get sign off and forget about the install.

If I were running a job and the client asked me to "forget" installing something like this I'd ask for confirmation in writing for bottom covering purposes.

I'm no insurance expert but if there is a fire and the insurance company spots that BC signed off on a fire suppression system that ain't there I'd put money on them not paying out. At which point blame would shift to the project manager.

I'd stick with the protected stairway in the first instance.

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