Home DIY

Cheers, I hadn't looked on Toolstation. Although I really need a definitive answer from building control on how many smoke alarms I need, 8 seems excessive for a 3 bed flat but details on what you need if you don't have fire doors is scarce.

Probably quite difficult to answer. I thought fire doors were compulsory and I've seen all sorts of stupid temporary solutions to building regs requirements. I got pulled on not using fire door stop on a project once, sadly the regs are partially based on examination of fatal failures though.

Yes, it's a loft conversion I'm having done but it appears that the rest of the flat, which isn't having any work done, will have to comply in terms of fire protection which my architect suggests means either new doors or lots of smoke alarms but pinning down an exact answer is a challenge.

We live in a 2nd floor flat.

Our dog has done a number (both figuratively and on occasion literally) on the shitty quality white carpets that were fitted when we bought the place.

We want to have flooring fitted that is not carpet.

Top of our list of requirements is that we cause literally no noise nuisance to our downstairs neighbours. Our lease says that we can have flooring that isn't carpet as long as we have decent acoustic underlay.

After noise performance, our next greatest requirements would be durability and comfort.

Does the forum DIY hive mind have any suggestions or experiences to share? Finally, any recommendations for floor people in South East?

The building control officers, and your architect, will be referring to BS5839-6 when looking at the specification, the design guidance will be in there.

On reflection they're probably asking for a Grade D (mains) LD1 system. This is common enough for small loft conversions in lieu of creating a protected stairwell using fire doors. That's alarms in all circulation spaces and any rooms where a fire might start, so basically everything except your bathroom.

Times have moved on since I last did an acoustic underlay to building regs standards but it involved expensive 10mm thick mats with rubber on one side and chopped reconstituted foam on the other, it all needed sealing to the edges of the room with acoustic sealant then had a laminate floor fitted over the top. Ceiling below was double plasterboard. It worked but there was still a lot of noise transmitted through the staircase!

At the time I was researching it we also looked at some kind of spun concrete between joists and incredibly sand, lots of it between joists. The idea of close to a ton of sand resting on the ceiling wasn't very reassuring though.

Not sure we'd be wise to go with tons of sand but I'll file that in the back of my mind!

Our block is from the 1930s and purpose built. Overall, sound insulation is good. Definitely far better than modern purpose built or conversion flats I have lived in.

It might be that there is no such thing as non-carpet flooring that is silent for blocks of flats. In that case, I guess we'll just have to look at carpets that can deal with the occasional pile of dog puke.

You'd probably be able to do it with the thick mat type.

Our new carpets are cat barf coloured for this reason. 'Sugar Sand" is what the manufacturer calls it.

Nunhead carpets are great BTW.

Rubber flooring may help.
If you have to go with carpet, maybe replaceable tiles for those little accidents?

It's called Brown Sugar ;)

Looks real cute right? Wrong. He ate something rank in the park yesterday and deposited 7 piles of vomit in our living room in the course of about 3 minutes. On his first birthday no less. To be fair, incidents like this are very rare. Most of the damage came when he was a proper puppy and we wanted to replace the carpets anyway.

Carpet tiles would be a really sensible thing to do but just a little bit too practical at the expense of feeling like we are living in an office!

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x post... any carpenters or carpenters details here? Had a built in cupboard built and they did a shit job and they aint going to fix it... need someone to sort.

Got any pics? How bad is it? Not sure I can help, just love to see stuff like that :)

Ha, I can rustle some up.
It's not really that bad... but... could have prob done a better job myself (although time vs money comes into play quite quickly).

The scope of work needing doing:

Refit/mount/trim door so it closes properly. The doors tolerances are too tight and the bottom catches when closing, adjusting the hinges may work but it looks like it needs a couple of mm off here and there to me. It's not perfectly square in the frame either.

Remove varnish. I bought and supplied a nice satin varnish which the "carpenter" decided it wasn't gloss enough and used some spare yacht varnish he had. Yacht varnish.

Sand down all edges, these were not sanded at all and are quite rough, I did a couple but if the above is getting done by a professional might as well get everything done and finished.

It's wood I presume from the varnish not Mdf?

Sorry, important detail missed, as ever, ply...

The guy also put a window in above a door, and used perspex rather than glass, fucking joker, I'm redoing that myself, aint rocket science.

Did you pay for glass and did he walk off with your varnish?

Pretty much. I was far too casual about it all...

Who is this joker?

A random lad employed by the same folks who did my bathroom. Had a good relationship with the guy who runs the company so trusted them too much. Hardworking guys but with very little finesse. Bragged about the quality of his work, quality was crap, maybe it's fine for a garden shed in Romania (where he is from) but not my house.

Cheers, I hadn't looked on Toolstation. Although I really need a definitive answer from building control on how many smoke alarms I need, 8 seems excessive for a 3 bed flat but details on what you need if you don't have fire doors is scarce.

Have a look at Aico/Ei gear - several different ranges, and radio link bases so you can make the alarms talk to each other where running cables isn't going to happen. Ours are powered from the local lighting circuit, with long-life battery backup, so all I had to do was run a couple of feet of cable above the ceiling from each light fitting.

The installation guide on their site is pretty good in terms of suggesting where you should site them. (But yes, eight sounds about right if you're putting one in every circulating and living space - 3x beds, 2 or 3 in hall/landing/stair, 2 or 3 in kitchen/dining/living.)

As for suppliers, the SafeLincs site is reasonable - rarely the cheapest, but fairly competitive, and lets you see a lot of ranges in one place. (I think it started as a trading arm of a safety partnership including the local fire service, so again, they're pretty good on advice.)

Mind you, I think we got our alarms in dribs and drabs from a bunch of ebay sellers, and saved a fortune.

@aggi I do not know who is telling you will get away with fire alarms instead of fire doors but they are wrong and in the current climate you are unlikely to get a lot movement on that. If you have added a floor to your house you need to ensure a Protected route to a place of safety out of the house that means fire doors end of conversation the LABC have a good leaflet here

just fyi those brackets and that context are the bro equivalent of "some of my best friends...are racist"

sorry about your cupboard.

I prob didn’t give enough context there... he constantly bragged about his work back home and customers he’d had for 10 years...