Hi all,
I am going round in circles at the moment. The council wont tell me anything without charging me for it! We live in a Victorian terrace and have spend the last (almost) 2 years slowly uncovering disaster building work as we go about fully renovating the house.
We have a standard width UPVC back door with no glass in it which was clearly put in by someone who hasn't got a clue what they are doing. It is an external (obviously) load bearing wall with the bathroom above. There is a settlement crack leading from the top of the door right the way up to the sill of the window above (concrete, also cracked!). What we want to do is widen the doorway to install a set of patio doors (184cm wide). It's a huge room but it's really dark so we want to let in as much natural light as possible. The brick pier next to the current door has been hacked at far too much and isn't substantial enough to support a steel lintel. We want to put in steel uprights either side of the door to support the RSJ as there just isn't enough solid brickwork to do it.
My question is, do we need planning for this? and do we need to call BC?
I am going round in circles at the moment. The council wont tell me anything without charging me for it! We live in a Victorian terrace and have spend the last (almost) 2 years slowly uncovering disaster building work as we go about fully renovating the house.
We have a standard width UPVC back door with no glass in it which was clearly put in by someone who hasn't got a clue what they are doing. It is an external (obviously) load bearing wall with the bathroom above. There is a settlement crack leading from the top of the door right the way up to the sill of the window above (concrete, also cracked!). What we want to do is widen the doorway to install a set of patio doors (184cm wide). It's a huge room but it's really dark so we want to let in as much natural light as possible. The brick pier next to the current door has been hacked at far too much and isn't substantial enough to support a steel lintel. We want to put in steel uprights either side of the door to support the RSJ as there just isn't enough solid brickwork to do it.
My question is, do we need planning for this? and do we need to call BC?