Loft room not to regs - would you make it into a child's bedroom?

[BettyButterknife]

We have 2 bedrooms on the first floor, and a loft room that the previous owners used as their bedroom. It's a conversion, but wasn't done to building regs. So it doesn't have a door - ie the staircase is open from the first floor right up into the room, and is quite steep.

DS1 is 3 and has his own bedroom. DS2 is 2 months and is in with us at the moment. But obviously the time will come really soon when he's 6 months or so where we want him out of our room. We'd thought we'd put the boys into DS1's room together, but I was thinking about it last night and how impractical it might be in terms of DS2 waking in the night.

Our original plan was to get the loft properly converted to regs so that it's safe for use as a bedroom. But I'm not sure whether we'll be able to afford that. So I was toying with the idea of making it into DS1's bedroom in the next few months.

What would you do? Am I crazy for even thinking we'd put him up there? What if we installed even more smoke detectors?

I dont think theres a problem tbh,I know legally it cant be classed as an extra bedroom but years ago things werent quite so intense and your obviously careful anyway so why not?

It depends on how it has been done but in general I wouldnt. Can you turn it into a play room and let DS's share. At least they would only be up there when you are all awake.

How would you get him out if there was a fire in the stair well? Can fire brigade get to the window in the loft room with their ladders (there are rules on positioning of roof windows for this reason) - they need a certain space to park and beable to get ladder at correct angle for roof.

you could put a stairgate at the door bit??

I'd be very cautious due to fire escape, more than anything else.

It might be worth asking your local fire officer to come and do a free fire safety check for you, as they will give you advice on how safe the room would be to use as a bedroom (they check fire exit routes etc) and how you could change it to make it safer, in the event of a fire.

If you wish to use it as a bedroom but it isn't to regs then why don't you have it as your room and let your children have the safest bedrooms?

Mmmm...it's a tough one.

My bedroom used to be in an attic bedroom that hadn't been done to regulations and had no doors, but the difference was I was a teenager and my parents told me to climb out the skylight and onto the roof in the case of a bad fire Plus this was in the 80s when things may have not been so strict.

Would it be possible / easy to put a fire door at the bottom or top of the staircase that leads to the loft?

Agree with getting the fire officer to come and check for you, round here they'll do a fire check and install extra alarms for free.

I'd just use it

Our whole house is pretty much open plan with no doors on the loft

I'm not sure whether it'd be easy to put in a fire door or not... How would I find that out? Would I need an architect or could a builder and/or the fire officer advise me?

There are Velux windows front and back, so the fire brigade would be able to access the loft room. But obviously it wouldn't be that easy to advise a 3 year old in the event of an emergency.

We would go up there (it's by far the nicest room and the reason we bought the house) but for my MIL saying she could never sleep on a different floor to her DC, especially one higher up - she felt parents needed to be nearest the front door in case something bad happened. She is highly neurotic somewhat cautious though.

Oh, I don't know. Back to the drawing board with getting some sort of work done, I think.

We are converting our bungalow into a house and wanted to turn the loft area into a playroom.
When the building inspector was visiting we discussed it with him in detail.
He said what a lot of people dont realise is that your house insurance would be void if you so much as lined the roof!

If there was a fire and they found evidence that you were using the loft space as a living area they will not pay out. The only thing you can do up there is board the floor for storage.
You would need fire escapes/fire doors with the self closing thingys on the first floor at a minimum. These would also need to be closed at all times so no door wedges anywhere!
We decided not to for this reason, I couldn't stand to have the doors shut all the time.

The rules have changed, you no longer have to have door closers on the doors. You still need fire doors, so its a bit illogical . . . .