Garage conversion questions?

[stiscooby]

Hi,

I'm planning on converting my garage (single garage attached to one side of the house) to a TV room.

2/3 of it has already been converted by previous owners, leaving the remaining 3rd at the front as storage with the roller door on the front. The existing area/spare room is obviously already accessible from inside the house.

We are going to pull down the current stud/dividing wall to then make full use of the original garage size then brick up/install a window where the garage door currently is.

Now, I have a few questions which I could do with some advice on please

1) I’m not too sure what to do with the new window, with regards to position. Looking at the front of the house - the top of the front room window, front door and down stairs toilet window are all level and the bottom of the front room window sits just above the red bricks (see pic - http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y112/stiscooby/Garage/fullfront.jpg ).
Now, to keep everything “level” and looking the same we would have to move the current lintel up two brick levels, is this recommended/general practice? The only reason I ask this is because two houses over the road have converted garages but their new window in the garage area hasn’t been raised to be in line with the other windows/door (its still two brick layers down)?

2) This is also kind of related to the above but..... the floor in the existing “spare room” area has been raised so it is level with the floor in the house, however the remaining garage/store area has not, so we would also have to raise the garage floor area by 2 bricks to bring it all level. However, if we don’t raise the lintel to bring the window up higher, surely the window would be too low when inside the room with the floor raised? (this is why I cant understand how the people’s over the road have been done, although their garages are integral to the house so might be different?). Is this builders being lazy or am I causing myself too much work?

3) The side wall which is joined to the house is double skin breeze block, would we have to insulate this wall by installing batons/plaster board etc (which is what we are planning on doing with the single skin brick wall?), or could this just be dot n dabbed or something?

Sorry for a rather long post

Thanks for any advice!

 

[noseall]

The 'standard' height of lintels at first floor door and window heads is approximately 2100mm from the dpc or floor level.

This need not apply to a garage because the floor level of a garage is often in line with the outer paved surface level, which is by design 150mm (two courses of bricks) below dpc.

However, it looks as though in your scenario that the drop in lintel levels has benefitted the garage door arrangement as it comfortably accommodates the roller door mechanism.

If it was me i would go to the expense of raising the lintel and having the window heads at the same height.

I did the same thing at my own house.

 

[stiscooby]

Many thanks for the reply.

The expense "shouldn't" be too bad as my Dad is doing the work for me anyway but as you say, I think things would look better all being the same level.