House Extensions

If you need more space in your house, you have two options.  You can either find a bigger house, or you can make your house bigger.  The latter will obviously cost money, but so does moving house.  It is generally more cost effective to extend your home.

Generally there are two ways to make the house bigger.  An extension can be built onto a part of the house, or you could consider carrying out a loft conversion which would involve adding an extra floor to the top of the house.

An extension is a very popular choice for many house owners.  In most cases an extension can add one or two rooms to the house. It can take the shape and form of the existing building but it can also be a more daring design subject to location and / or planning constraints.

Extension Costs

The cost of an extension will depend upon the size and complexity of the project, the number of rooms required and the amount of detail you want to include in the final package.  Generally, an extensions can cost anything from £10,000 to possibly over £100,000. If your budget is limited we can help you save money by designing your requirements around the budget.  We would try to estimate the easiest way to obtain the results, which would be the cheapest way to build your extension.

Planning Consent & Building Regulation Approval

Most single storey extensions can be carried out under Permitted Development. This is the total amount measured in cubic volume that you can to extend your home without the need for Planning Consent. The total amount permittable will depend on whether the house is located within a Conservation Area or within an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. Generally you are allowed to extend by 70m3 but this is reduced to 50m3 when located in these areas. In all cases the Local Authority Duty Planning Officer should be consulted when in doubt.

If planning consent is required then this can take up to 8 weeks for a decision to be made from when the application is registered. Once planning consent has been gained then you will have to submit a Building Regulation Application for your extension. This can take anything up to a further 6 weeks to gain the necessary technical approvals to enable a commencement on site.

In most cases, you will need an architect. If you do, we recommend the services of Draft 2 Design Ltd, an architectural firm based in Hailsham.

Building stage

The building stage itself can take anything from four weeks, for small, one room extentions, to eight weeks or more, depending on how many rooms, complications with the foundations, etc.  Prior to starting this process we would give you an idea how long the building work will take, and in most cases we will complete the project within this time frame.

Whilst the building stage will cause inevitable disruption to the lives of the occupants (unless they move out temporary) we will always try to minimise this disruption to the absolute minimum.

Feel free to contact us for a free - no obliogation site survey and or quote.