laundry chute.

I've had search, and can find nothing recent about the building control requirements for a laundry chute..

I've read the planning fire spread - information from the portal.. and am sill a bit lost. .

Are they ok - if I have a fire door on the top? Do I need to have the opening at a certain height - do I have to use a stainless steel chute- or would some kind of fire proof board work? (ideally I'd like a thin rectangular chute and the ones I can find online are round.. and will use a bit too much space .. ) Or a spiral tubing duct?


Any advice welcome

Sorry for the late reply to this but I only recently joined this forum for an issue with a boiler.
I had a self build done which completed in May 2014 and in that house I had a laundry chute installed. The chute is essentially a hole between the ground and first floor lined with MDF. On the first floor the chute is accessed via a cupboard door which is also just MDF.
This is the second selfbuild I have done and both have laundry chutes constructed in the same way. The first one, completed in 1999 had a trap door made from MDF. The later one didn't and I was surprised that Building Control didn't pick up on this since there would be nothing to stop a small child opening the cupboard door on the first floor and falling down the chute which is at floor level.
We had both chutes detailed by a qualified architect who did all the Building Reg drawings and I assume therefore that both actually conform.
Glad to answer any other questions if you have any.
AJ

Thank you for replying..

Freddy I had searched and I found those links - but they all seemed old to me - and I know regs change often..

As far as I can gather there are no regs.. so I'm pondering if I need to tell BC anyway ..

I really want to keep us safe.. My current plan is for the chute go from a bathroom to a downstairs hall cupboard.. just outside the bathroom is a smoke alarm and just outside the cupboard is a smoke alarm.. so if there were smoke on either floor the alarm would sound..

I was thinking of making the door of the cupboard on the ground floor a fire door - so if there is a fire downstairs - it will not go rapidly from one floor to the other.. (my only worry was that someone might not shut the door.. so could make it 'self closing'..

Tigsly said:

As far as I can gather there are no regs.. so I'm pondering if I need to tell BC anyway ..

Click to expand...

There are definitely regulations - they are just written to be very broad and do not get down to the detail of stuff like laundry chutes.

http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2010/2214/schedule/1/made

For example, go down to B3, Internal fire spread (structure). It doesn't mention any specifics, but you can see that what you want to do is almost certainly covered by Building Regs, so you need to comply.