Building Regulations
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There are many places to get hold of the building regulations if you want some bedtime reading but by far the best is the free downloads available from the planning portal (they can all be found here free to download! Some companies try and sell them! Don't pay for them!)
I have looked through the building regs, but I really am relying on the building inspector to help me a little at each stage to guide me. Obviously I have a fairly good Idea of what I need to do for the first few stages, but after than I'm a little blurry on what I need to do. I'll try and tackle this piece by piece so it doesn't become too overwhelming!
The process is that all building work and alterations to a property need to comply with the regulations. To make sure you are complying with the building regulations, you must apply to the local council building control department to let them know what you are doing and also to ensure you are not building anything dangerous or anything which may not confirm with the regulations.
The Building Contol ProcessHow does it all work!?
Well, there are two ways of playing it, either submitting full plans (you submit a very detailed pack of drawings etc and they simply get approved or rejected) or submitting building notice. Each one has it's merits. I have gone for the building notice route so I can plan as I go! With the building notice route, the simplest way of explaining it. is that you submit an application to get going then the following inspections/meetings must happen at each of the below stages: 1. The commencement meeting (Optional) If, (like me) you have little idea on what you are this really is a must, to put your mind at ease and to make sure you don't do anything wrong! We have our commencement meeting ont he 7th August 2012, the site looked like the picture on the right hand side, I wanted to expose the existing sewer pipe and also try and find out what material our footings were going to sit on, so I dug a few holes for the inspector to look in that morning. Yes, I had already demolished the conservatory by this point! 2. Foundation Excavation 3. Oversite prepared 4. Damp proof course to walls and floor 5. Drains Laid 6. Drains Test 7. Structural Steel work 8. Roof structure 9. Electrical carcass 10. Occupation 11. Completion |
This is how the site looked when we had our first commencement meeting
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