This is a one bedroomed purpose built flat. It has one living room, one bedroom, one kitchen, one hall and one bathroom. The aim is to remove the door between the kitchen and hallway and widen the opening by about 18 inches to make it all one walk in space. I was told by a builder that it still needs a door between the hall and kitchen for fire reasons, while another said there is no need. Does anyone know what the regs are in this situation.
Fire Regs (the duplicate has now been locked)
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Thanks Woody. I could not find anything on the web in the regs regarding this point. Could you point to a web site or link?
What country are you in? (E,W,S,NI have different rules, though none will allow what you want without some significant extra work, e.g. perhaps sprinklers, IIRC.)
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Thanks. I looked. I see nothing relating to my situation. In effect, as I have a landing running past the kitchen window, I must be classed a ground floor.
Diagram 3 on page 23 appears to cover it. No hallway is shown.
The regs do not make exceptions for flats where a landing runs past the kitchen window - and nor is there any rationale for them to do so. If there is a fire in your open-plan kitchen while you are in bed, the route from your bedroom to the exit will be full of smoke and flames. The kitchen window and its landing will not be any help to you in that case. Maybe you will be rescued through the bedroom window, if the fire brigade has a ladder long enough [they may not, or it my take a long time to arrive], or maybe you will BURN TO DEATH.
You remind me of a great sign I saw next to the railway a few years back "Maximum fine for trespass : £1000. Maximum penalty: Death"
You can't look in today's regulations - although there are still regualtions for compartmentation, detection and and means of escape within Documenmt B (2). The rules that apply are the regualtions from the time it was built.
You can't make the situation any worse, that's the principle. If there was a fire door there to start with, as there should normally be to have conformed the the regualtions when built, then you can't remove it, as then it wont conform.
The options are to have an alternative means of either preventing fire and fire spread, early warning, or other means of escape. And this can only be decided using a risk-based assessment.
And bear in mind that there are implications for the whole block, not just your flat. You could be personally responsible for anything that results from your altering of life-safety measures.
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