Sadly, in the wake of the credit crunch and the global recession it triggered, many home-owners have found their property worth much less than they bought it for just a short number of years ago. This has left many people stuck in houses or areas they no longer want to live in, unable to make enough money on the sale of their current home to warrant leaving.
With this situation affecting thousands across the country, the hunt is truly on to find ways to increase the value of your house in order to make a profit in a tricky market. Thankfully, we’ve found one major way of doing so; loft conversions.
By providing an extra room in your house through an attic conversion, you could dramatically affect the sale value of your home, giving you the vital cash you need to proceed with your life in a new location.
However, in order to benefit from the lucrative financial advantages a loft conversion can provide, you have to make sure you go about the design process in the right way from the very beginning. That’s down to the fact that any rooms created in an attic conversion cannot be considered as extra ‘habitable rooms’ in your house unless they comply with certain building regulations.
If you fail to meet these strict building rules, your new loft conversion will not only fail to add value to your house, it may also be seen as unsafe and cause your building and fire insurance to become invalid. Luckily for you though, at Modern Attics we’re very well versed in all the ins and outs of current building regulations legislation and will make sure your new attic conversion is up to standard, so there’s no need for you to worry.
In case you still have your doubts, we thought we’d go into few of the things we’ll carefully consider in the construction of your loft conversion.
Perhaps the most important thing to consider is fire safety. To allow speedy exit from your attic conversion, it must have a proper fixed staircase, or an alternate tread staircase or fixed ladder with handrails instead in certain circumstances. There are certain restrictions on the steepness of the stairs up to your loft conversion too, and the headroom above them. Also, fire safety regulations require that smoke detectors be installed, electrical certificates be completed and in some cases an extra fire exit must be added to your home on the ground floor.
Other important things to consider when designing your attic conversion include ventilation and insulation. Failure to comply with ventilation requirements will mean your loft conversion is overly prone to trapped condensation which can lead to damp and mold, causing health risks in your home. Ventilation, on the other hand, is needed for warmth and to make your attic conversion more energy-efficient and environmentally friendly.
Additionally, plans must be pre-approved by Building Control authorities and then inspected and passed once work has started on the loft conversion. This ensures that the build is structurally sound and your attic conversion is safe to live in.
Of course this is just a quick introduction to the many things we’ll think through for you when designing and constructing your loft conversion. In fact the real regulations last for pages and pages, so if you want to be certain that the investment you make really pays off, put your build in the hands of the regulation experts at Modern Attics.