I'm hoping to put an extension on the side of my house and need to work out a way to gain access to the new upstairs area. I don't seem to have much scope to alter the existing staircase, I wonder if you guys can come up with any clever solution?
The top picture is as it is now, showing the upstairs rooms. Firstly those doors are only 13cm from the top of the stairs so that's not Part K compliant any more, anyway.
The second picture shows the proposed extension area and it's that which we're trying to get access to. Ideally I would be able to replace the kite winders with a square landing and then go left to the existing rooms and right to the new ones, but you can appreciate that the new square landing would initially be far too low to then get up on the left side, right? Two whole steps too low, in fact, if it replaced the current kite winders.
So, can I raise the whole staircase by starting it further back so that by the time it reaches the point where it needs to branch left and right, it's already high enough to do that with just one extra step each way? I have room for two more treads at the bottom without running out of space for that bottom landing (i.e. a square of sides the same as the staircase width), BUT I only have about 10cm of headroom to play with before I hit the 200cm requirement, so I don't think I can do that, either.
Can anyone think of a way to turn the stairs off to the right somehow, without ruining access to the left? The last resort is to sacrifice a chunk of one of the existing upstairs rooms to make a new, larger landing.
Thanks
The top picture is as it is now, showing the upstairs rooms. Firstly those doors are only 13cm from the top of the stairs so that's not Part K compliant any more, anyway.
The second picture shows the proposed extension area and it's that which we're trying to get access to. Ideally I would be able to replace the kite winders with a square landing and then go left to the existing rooms and right to the new ones, but you can appreciate that the new square landing would initially be far too low to then get up on the left side, right? Two whole steps too low, in fact, if it replaced the current kite winders.
So, can I raise the whole staircase by starting it further back so that by the time it reaches the point where it needs to branch left and right, it's already high enough to do that with just one extra step each way? I have room for two more treads at the bottom without running out of space for that bottom landing (i.e. a square of sides the same as the staircase width), BUT I only have about 10cm of headroom to play with before I hit the 200cm requirement, so I don't think I can do that, either.
Can anyone think of a way to turn the stairs off to the right somehow, without ruining access to the left? The last resort is to sacrifice a chunk of one of the existing upstairs rooms to make a new, larger landing.
Thanks