Hello - can anyone please advise on the following ?

We live in a two bedroom chalet style house - built 1950 - and would
like to add two further bedrooms via a loft conversion.

There is no room to do a normal loft conversion - the pictures below
show the problem:

http://www.neaves.net/house.html

So - can we "un-chalet" the house ? i.e. make the profile of the house
rectangular so we gain more space in the current bedrooms and put on a
new roof that can accommodate a velux type conversion ?

This seems to me to be horribly complex and expensive ? Let alone
planning permission.

In terms of cost benefit - a two bedroom house like this is £350k and
to buy a four bedroom in the same area would be maybe £500k

Thanks

Phil

wrote:

This seems to me to be horribly complex and expensive ? Let alone
planning permission.


I suspect that getting building control approval will be at least as
much of a challenge.

You would be raising the height of the external brick walls and
probably one internal structural wall, putting additional load on to
the existing foundations. It is likely that the foundations won't be
considered sufficient for this, so building control may expect the
existing footings to be underpinned, or piled. Not cheap, unless you
can prove that your house is built on footings that are supported
directly on bedrock, when you might be OK.

The first thing you should do is look around the area and see if any
houses similar to yours have been modified in the way you suggest. If
so, try to find out exactly what was done, and when, with particular
reference to the foundations. A few years ago it might have been
possible to do what you are suggesting while leaving the existing
foundations alone. But the aftermath of the many hot summers in the
past couple of decades (in terms of clay shrinkage and the resulting
settlement) has not surprisingly made building control very cautious.

Your first port of call should be a chat with the building control
officers at the local council offices. You will get a good idea of
what is possible, and what isn't, from their reaction when you tell
them what you would like to do.

Good luck! It would be an interesting project.

wrote in message
...
Hello - can anyone please advise on the following ?

We live in a two bedroom chalet style house - built 1950 - and would
like to add two further bedrooms via a loft conversion.

There is no room to do a normal loft conversion - the pictures below
show the problem:

http://www.neaves.net/house.html

So - can we "un-chalet" the house ? i.e. make the profile of the house
rectangular so we gain more space in the current bedrooms and put on a
new roof that can accommodate a velux type conversion ?

This seems to me to be horribly complex and expensive ? Let alone
planning permission.

In terms of cost benefit - a two bedroom house like this is £350k and
to buy a four bedroom in the same area would be maybe £500k

To pull it down and build a new one would cost less, seriously.

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the
drugs began to take hold. I remember saying
something like:

So - can we "un-chalet" the house ? i.e. make the profile of the house
rectangular so we gain more space in the current bedrooms and put on a
new roof that can accommodate a velux type conversion ?

You don't need to raise the existing walls - you can put on new profile
roof trusses that will immediately form a new storey, albeit still with
dormer-style windows. I was involved with one last year and it was very
successful, gaining three full-height bedrooms upstairs with en-suites
and and a new seperate bathroom. The advantage of doing it this way is
the foundations will (should) cope with the load as it's not much more
than the existing load and it's relatively quick.
As always - employ a professional to advise you; such a job isn't cheap
and it's not worth cutting corners.
--
Dave
GS850x2 XS650 SE6a

"It's a moron working with power tools.
How much more suspenseful can you get?"
- House

Grimly Curmudgeon wrote:
We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the
drugs began to take hold. I remember saying
something like:

So - can we "un-chalet" the house ? i.e. make the profile of the house
rectangular so we gain more space in the current bedrooms and put on a
new roof that can accommodate a velux type conversion ?

You don't need to raise the existing walls - you can put on new profile
roof trusses that will immediately form a new storey, albeit still with
dormer-style windows. I was involved with one last year and it was very
successful, gaining three full-height bedrooms upstairs with en-suites
and and a new seperate bathroom. The advantage of doing it this way is
the foundations will (should) cope with the load as it's not much more
than the existing load and it's relatively quick.
As always - employ a professional to advise you; such a job isn't cheap
and it's not worth cutting corners.

Having raised my roof to make a chalet from a bungalow some years ago,
the planners were the biggest hurdle. In the end I got it through
becuase we had a bungalow one side and a standard house on the other.
Raising my roof to a median height compared to my neighbours was seen to
be acceptable.
Recently my bungalow neighbour has also gone chalet style and PP was
even easier for him as it brought his roof into line with mine!
If both your neighbours have similar height building to yours then you
might have trouble with the planners.
Building control problems can normally be over come one way or another
because the structure can be made to comply by design. But the planners
have no such hard and fast rules and can pass or fail on aesthetic
grounds. I'd consult them first with some photos and sketches of what
you propose in relation to your neighbours.

What really p's me off is that planners can approve hideous changes in
the high street or other commercial structures quite out of keeping with
adjacent buildings but in a street of dwellings, building seem to have
to blend in!

Good luck

Bob

Bob Minchin wrote:

What really p's me off is that planners can approve hideous changes in
the high street or other commercial structures quite out of keeping with
adjacent buildings but in a street of dwellings, building seem to have
to blend in!


That seems quite reasonable to me. It might be OK to work or shop in
a dump, but who would want to live in one?