Old roof left under the new roof after extension?

[Maddie29]

Has anybody done a two storey extension with an add on to the roof? We are in the middle of ours at the moment and I was surpirised to see that they’ve left the old roof beams in place even though they’re now in the middle of the new roof. I was dreaming of having a massive loft and am now feeling a little disheartened as the old beams are so close together they’re impassable so the new section of loft is totally unusable. Has anybody else had this? I’m not entirely sure if this is standard or my builders just being lazy?

Depends they may be needed to hold the roof up. Did you speak to the builder before hand about the loft ?

Is it listed?

It’s not listed, it’s a 1930s house but we’ve extended the roof to the side so it’s exactly the same just longer and at the back as well. We didn’t have an outright conversation about whether they would be removed or not but I had said to him that we were moving the loft hatch so we could access all the new loft easily and he didn’t mention that it wouldn’t be possible to get to.

We had a similar extension and the architect specially wrote on the spec that there were no be no obstructions between the old and new part of the roof.
This caused the builder a lot of issues as the old part of the roof was holding the old ceiling up.

What roof structure is on the plans? I would have insisted on a new roof and loft space so you should have said you wanted this to your architect. We extended upwards from our garage (raised the roof line essentially) and use the loft as a guest flat. There are tie beams but high up. No loft though as we had to keep the roofline to an agreed height.

Who designed the roof and what did you say you wanted because a new roof could have been designed giving space as we have done. Not cheap though.

Usually architects get in Structural Engineers to design new roofs where it’s tricky. Builders should never be asked to do this!