Hi, we live in an Edwardian terraced house. The dining room is dark and gloomy and has quite a small window which is an ugly modern replacement, though the original opening was the same size.
A few doors down from us some of our neighbours have a bay window in the same place. They are otherwise identical houses to ours, but the bay windows are clearly original and must have been built when the houses were built. We really like them for the extra light and space they bring even though they only project about 0.5m from the wall.
We would like to build something similar in place of our ugly window. I assumed this would be a doddle due to extensions being permitted developments, but the structural engineer who came to advise us and the builder said he didn't think we'd be allowed to build an extension because the right hand side of the window (as you face it from outside) would be well over 3m from the back of the living room and you can apparently only build extensions up to 3m from the back of the house. Behind the living room are the stairs, dining room and kitchen. All of these are original and are built on two floors. Only the rear of the kitchen and the utility room behind is a modern one floor flat roofed extension going into the back garden.
See the proposed bay window/"extension" in green in the plan below.
Then when I called the building regs people they said that because it was only going to be 1.5m away from the boundary fence there would be a maximum size due to fire regulations. Looking at the Part B regulations it seems clear that for a building over 1m away from a boundary you can have 5.6m2 of window, and if over 2m away you can have 12m2 of window (does this mean that at 1.5m you can have up to 9m2 of windows?). The total surface area of the proposed bay window would be about 3.5m2, but if I add the area of the kitchen windows too (since there isn't a firedoor between kitchen and dining room meaning I suppose the kitchen counts as the same compartment) the total of the bay plus kitchen windows is about 7m2. Bigger than 5.6 and smaller than 12.
As a compromise the builders suggested building an oriel bay window with a window seat so that we get the extra light but not the floor area as this would no longer count as an extension. If they do that, how much of the brickwork below the present windowsill could they remove without the result being counted as an extension? In theory if they went down far enough the inside base of the oriel could be at floor level of the dining room as it would still be a few inches off the ground outside, but is that taking things too far?
Can anyone suggest any other options? In particular, do the rules about 3m from the end of the house apply from the French windows of the living room, in which case it scuppers the idea of a bay window, even though some of the houses in my road were originally built like that, and what do people make of the fire regulations?
Many thanks!
A few doors down from us some of our neighbours have a bay window in the same place. They are otherwise identical houses to ours, but the bay windows are clearly original and must have been built when the houses were built. We really like them for the extra light and space they bring even though they only project about 0.5m from the wall.
We would like to build something similar in place of our ugly window. I assumed this would be a doddle due to extensions being permitted developments, but the structural engineer who came to advise us and the builder said he didn't think we'd be allowed to build an extension because the right hand side of the window (as you face it from outside) would be well over 3m from the back of the living room and you can apparently only build extensions up to 3m from the back of the house. Behind the living room are the stairs, dining room and kitchen. All of these are original and are built on two floors. Only the rear of the kitchen and the utility room behind is a modern one floor flat roofed extension going into the back garden.
See the proposed bay window/"extension" in green in the plan below.
As a compromise the builders suggested building an oriel bay window with a window seat so that we get the extra light but not the floor area as this would no longer count as an extension. If they do that, how much of the brickwork below the present windowsill could they remove without the result being counted as an extension? In theory if they went down far enough the inside base of the oriel could be at floor level of the dining room as it would still be a few inches off the ground outside, but is that taking things too far?
Can anyone suggest any other options? In particular, do the rules about 3m from the end of the house apply from the French windows of the living room, in which case it scuppers the idea of a bay window, even though some of the houses in my road were originally built like that, and what do people make of the fire regulations?
Many thanks!
