Loft Conversion and building regs - help please

[greenbeanie]

We were due to have a loft conversion starting in the next couple of weeks to create a bedroom, office and bathroom. All seemed to be going fine until building regs came round.

They have said that in order for the conversion to comply with regs as it will be adding an extra floor to a 2 storey house we will need to replace every door in the house with a fire door, replace all the architrave round the doors and install fire strips, that are apparently strips that go around the door frame and swell if there is a fire to seal off rooms.

We live in a 1930's house and I would be really reluctant to get rid of all the original doors and architrave. We have been told that our only other option is to install a sprinkler system! Also all the landing and hall ceilings need an extra 2 layers of plaster board to meet fire regs.

This all seems really excessive, I know it is to keep us safe in the event of a fire. Has anyone else had to go to this extent with a loft conversion? It would completely blow our budget as the cost of doors etc and all the work would be an extra 5k so at the moment it looks like we can't go ahead.

Your architect should help but some loft probably won't comply without half knocking down the house. Sounds as if you have inner inner rooms across 3 floors. You might have to have an external escape route.

I've recently had s loft conversion, bedroom only though. We had to either change all the doors to fire doors or have a wired in smoke alarm system throughout. We had the doors gone as I was looking at replacing anyway. They're not too bad, just four panelled ones.

Yes currently it's looking tricky and incredibly expensive 😭😭😭😭😭