Laundry Chute

[CraziFoobz]

Good morning MN’s,

We are planning a laundry chute from your ground floor utility room up to your 2nd floor loft conversion, with the chute being accessible from the 2 first floor bedrooms also.

Does anyone know the fire safety requirements for these and the building regs for a laundry chute? We love the idea but are now realising that it’s possible that if you don’t carry out annual inspections for fire certificates etc, it could invalidate your insurance?

Does anyone have a chute and knows any information about this?

Many thanks

You can probably Google for specific regulations but my parents had one and all I can recommend is that you have the chute as straight a route as possible and tell anyone using it not to tightly bundle stuff and shove it in - I recall more than a few times clothes (or more often a bundle of bed linen) getting stuck!

Well I'd probably treat it much the same way as any other void passing between floors - like soil stacks do or a lift even etc to avoid it acting like a chimney in the event of a fire.

If you are installing yourself perhaps fireline plasterboard/2 layers of plasterboard on all sides including where it penetrates the floor and it may require a vent grille and access hatch on each floor it passes through. You could also install a fire detector in there accessible from the access hatch on the 2nd floor

There are companies which make ready made components for you so I'd be inclined to pay a bit extra and use these as at least they will know the exact building regs required and will be covered by a warranty - have a look at www.laundry chute solutions.co.uk