Hi, am looking to remove a wall in our flat which is one of 4 flats in a converted victorian house. Main reason is to open a fairly narrow kitchen up and more open plan. Obviously I am aware of structural things related to such a task, but am interested to know if there is any fire risk issue. The wall in question is marked yellow. The floor plan is as we bought it. Currently the entrance to this 1st floor flat is already open to the kitchen as you can see. In the kitchen is installed a fire detector and siren. That entrance door is a fire door and the building passes fire checks.

By removing the wall, I will need a building control notice from the council, in my view it is not making the situation any worse by removing the wall, the escape route from bedrooms is no different. However my view is irrelevant! By getting building control involved am I likely to suddenly have to block off the lounge and kitchen from the hall?

Any thoughts/comments welcomed. 

 

 

Escape through open plan kitchen/diners is already an option in Building Regs guidance as long as:

i. The travel distance from the flat entrance door to any point in any habitable room is a maximum of 9m.

ii. Cooking facilities are remote from the main entrance door and do not impede the escape route from anywhere in the flat.

How far is the cooker from the entrance lobby?

 

Thanks for your reply.

i) My guess is under 9m, i will do a check of this.

ii) the hob is the middle square in the line of vertical squares in the floor plan, so the centre of the hob would be 1.9m from that little internal wall just by the front door, if that makes sense? 

Checked, and based on floor plan, top most left to front door is 7.5m and bottom most left is 7.9m to door so fine on (i)

Sounds like the design has been done in line with residential fire engineering calculations for open plan kitchens with the cooker at least 1.8m from the escape route.

These calculations do assume that there is an LD1 alarm system (smoke/heat alarms in every room and hall other than toilets/bathrooms) and a residential sprinkler system, which I'm guessing you don't?

Do the bedrooms have escape windows?

It's not beyond possibility that the existing layout you inherited on purchase was itself unauthorised without building regs approval - it's not uncommon for previous owners to have knocked around internal layouts without going through the right processes.