wanting to take a wall out at home and been told by council that i will need calculations !!!

basically what should i pay? i got quoted £275 +vat for calc's and building reg application is this right or a rip off as i've never had to deal with this stuff before

 

It depends totally on what you're doing.

Your statement regarding never having had to deal with this stuff before suggests maybe you dont know what you're doing and are best leaving it to experts?

Failing that.

What are you knocking down.

Building regs will only apply for certain things and in certain situations, like sale of the house or building of an extension.

If the house is listed as 3 bed, 2 living room house and you make it 2 bed or through lounge the solicitor may advise the purchaser to have building regs approval restrospectivly if you dont have it.

If you do the job right in the first place you wont have any issues in this case anyway.

So...

What are you doing??
Whats above the wall you're removing??

Jake

 

Incidently the price seems about right for a local council officer to come and tick some boxes.. I think around here its about £200 + vat.

 

We just paid £400 for an architect to draw up a plan with building regs and a structural engineer to do the calculations for the steels etc.
On top of that is about £130 for the application and £120 ish when you complete which is payable to the council.

 

here's the story............
i live in a timber framed brick skinned detatched house. the house spans 5.2m. theres one wall that runs from front to back. this wall is staggered, from front (hallway/lounge) it is 4.9m long then staggered out about 1.5m (kitchen/dinning area) and continues for 2.7m. it is this 2.7m wall that i would like to take down to increse the kitchen area. all the walls in the house are 3" stud walls.

i had a builder round who said that the wall is fine to take down and that he'd 'just' put 2 9x2 timbers in the walls place to take the 'bounce' out of the floor above. i being sceptical, rang the council who said that i could not do that and would need to get calc's and put the correct steel/rsj/lintel in it's place. that all makes sense my question is how much so i expect to pay for the calc's and building reg application on top of the £149 +vat that the council wants as i am getting some quotes of £500 +?

i hope this all makes sense

 

Ask Chip

 

Similar thing to what I have done with my house (ask Tiff lol)

But my wall wasn't a stud it was solid brick 3.8m long, one brick thick to eaves with timber joists running through the wall spanning 4800mm (4.8m).

I knocked the whole thing down and put a 203 by 102 23mm thick I section beam 3200mm long ontop of the bits I left to take the bounce out of the joists.

Nowt wrong with it, and what I have done is over kill.

Cost me £89 delivered for the steel.

With regards to yours there is nowt wrong with using wood - you said it yourself, your house (as are most in the uk) is timber framed.

The only problem you potentially face is what the timbers he's putting in are supported on.

I have some pics if you're interested but I wont post them for the sake of it as I almost cant be arsed

 

the "calcs" will take lots of things into account, including over engineering the design so that it will take more load that you could posibly apply to the structure

i think omndeo man does this sort of thing for a living, drop him a pm to see if he can shed more light on the matter, but it's a little soemthing like this:

wieght of the roof
wieght of the load on the roof
roof materials etc
then you've got the loading for the top
then you can work out how big a set of joists to use to support all that
then you can figure out how much studding you'd need to carry all this weight
then ultimatly down to the depth of the foundations needed to carry all of that wieght and so on, so more than just a few taps on a calculator

also make sure that the drawings you get match up to your house dimensions, if they are wrong then you've wasted your money

 

We had quotes of £300-£1500 for the building regs and structural calculations. That would be in addition to the £149 the council want.

As the others have said, it will tell you what size steels to use etc. We had to use 2 x 178x102x19mm @ 3m long steel rsj's.

Thing to think about is if you were to ever sell the house, the buyer would want to see you had building regs/planning permission for it. You can apply for it retrospectively, but could involve taking it down and rebuilding it lol.

 

Drop jj a PM, he does this sort of stuff for a living, he did some calcs for Si B on here.

Very approachable guy too, thats who I would speak to if I was doing any building work that needed to meet regulations