TomC wrote:
All,

Thanks for the responses and helpful advice received so far.

Just to clarify : the "roof space" is actually the first floor of the
house which can be described as open plan. It's a new house and the
architect designed the first floor so that we could later put in
partition walls to divide it into 2 bedrooms. There is a window in
place for one bedroom and a velux in place for the other. The house
is actually in France, but I would be interested to know if these
count as secondary fire escapes under UK regulations?

Thanks again

Tom


Yes they can, if they meet certain standards.

These are extracts from the UK Building Regulations.

'The window should have an unobstructed openable area that is at least
0.33m2 and at least 450mm high and 450mm wide (the route through the
window may be at an angle rather than straight through).The bottom of
the openable area should be not more than 1100mm above the floor' (for
normal windows).

For Velux windows, in the plane of the roof slope, the Regulations refer
to the bottom of the window being a max 1700mm up from the eaves
(measured along the roof slope), and 600mm min, 1100mm max measured
vertically from the floor to the bottom of the openable area.

You can down load a copy of the AD's he

http://www.planningportal.gov.uk/eng...313971412.html

Of course, the French might have their own rules.