Addition of Stairs to Attic space

Cmar-Ireland

Hi Folks,

We got the keys to our 1st house last week and have a few jobs to do before we start moving in. The most important of these is to construct a proper stairs to the attic space.
The house is a 3 bed semi, with the attic fully converted to a usable room(s). It's a little over 7m square, so it's a good size, has a radiator and lighting, fully slabbed, velux etc.
The problem is it's accessed via a stira ladder, so at the moment it's not ideal for everyday use. We plan to use it as a home entertainment room, but first we need better access.
The roof trusses at 400 on centre, so will require some work to create the opening.
My question is, who can I contact to tell me what is required? We will eventually be selling this house so we need to ensure the integrity of the house is not affected, everything reg compliant etc.

But we don't know where to start with the work. I was in contact with the site foreman and the company that designed the roof trusses. The truss guy told us it can be done, but a structural survey of the opening will be needed and his design fees are approx €2k. We are budgeting approx €5k for the complete work. Is this realistic and where do we go from here?

Thanks for reading!

Cheers
Ciaran

Gumbo

these may be able to help

http://www.atticconversions.ie/

sinnerboy

There is much more to consider . Read this carefully first ...

http://www.environ.ie/en/DevelopmentandHousing/BuildingStandards/PublicationsDocuments/FileDownLoad,1657,en.pdf

Mellor

kceire wrote: »

these may be able to help

http://www.atticconversions.ie/

Some of the info on that is misleading regarding habitable rooms in the attic and the regs. I have seen the mis-info quoted on this site before so the above is obviously where it came from. The info on planning being required is also wrong. For the record, a room is not habitable because of its height, its the use. The above suggests that their by-pass of the regs is acceptable, which of course it isn't.

Cmar-Ireland wrote:

My question is, who can I contact to tell me what is required? We will eventually be selling this house so we need to ensure the integrity of the house is not affected, everything reg compliant etc

Most attic conversations are not reg compliant. And becasue of this they can't be included in the house spec when selling. This goes for if it is a bedroom or entertainment room, basically anything other than storage.

If you want to have the house reg compliant and add the room to the house spec. then you will have to

• Convert the existing stairway into a fire protected stairwell. This is because the house will become 3 story.
• This means self closing doors to bedrooms
• Fire rated doors with smoke seals
• Fire rated walls

The above is not a complete list, but off the top of my head. As I said most attics work doesn't go this route so the converted space is never much more than storage space

Cmar-Ireland

Just looked at the plans of the room, was a bit off with the dims, it's 5m x 5.7m. Full height ceiling approx 2.2m wide before the roof slope.

I'll try atticconversions for a survey, see what they suggest.