Turning a lounge/diner back into two separate rooms – building regs?

We have a 1930’s house where the wall between lounge and dining room was removed back in the mists of time and a patio door put in on the back wall to the garden. One of the doors off the hall was also blocked off when the work was done so there’s single internal door access from the interior of the house.

A house up the road is having alterations and there’s a set of 1930’s interior bi-fold doors with stained glass panels available.

So we’re thinking of reinstating the wall between the rooms with the bi-fold doors in it.

It’s not creating a new room as such but do any building regs apply? These are not fire rated doors, for example? I’d probable use fire or sound proof plasterboard to give the new wall a bit of weight but the doors would go 3/4 of the way across the room.

Would probably not look to reinstate the blocked doorway to the hall so access to the lounge would be via the dining room and then through the bi-fold doors – would this ‘feel’ odd if you were looking at a house to buy?

Can’t speak to the legalities of it, but my parents house has it’s original layout, and they have a sofa in front of the hall access door, so access to the front room is via the dininig room and bifold doors – it doesn’t feel wierd at all to me. But that could just be because I’ve grown up with it!

I turned a large lounge/diner into a smaller lounge and larger kitchen.

no regs were needed.

You need building regs sign off for just everything nowadays.

I removed a stud wall and a door to put the toilet in my bathroom and it was picked up when I sold the house, that there was no building officer sign off. I only needed to take out one of those meaningless insurance policies to sort it out, which was probably cheaper than paying a building officer to come out and have a look at it.

I thought partitions were exempt – but it seems that they new building regs now!
(only to install, not to remove)

Think about means of escape from the lounge if there is a fire in the dining room. Could you get out of the lounge window? (from memory 450×450 min opening, cill less than 1100 from the floor).
If no structural alts and the escape window is okay then no need for building regs (in my opinion).

The glass might not comply – I think replacement window glass below a certain height had to be toughened so that it breaks into granules not stabby shards if someone falls into it. Presumably that might also apply to internal glass panels?

The glass panels are in the top quarter of the doors so probably shoulder height upwards.

Front windows wouldn’t be compliant for escape purposes. Reinstating door to hall would sort that though?

Yes, putting the hall door back in would seem to fix it all.
Glass below 800mm and 300 either side of a door (and 1500 high in the door and beside it) needs to be safety glass

Out of interest, given that currently a fire in the dining room can still trap you in the lounge, and presumably the building is compliant, how does installing a stud wall and doors (which will add, I dunno, 30s to surival time in the event of being trapped in said area) suddenly render the space non-compliant?

I guess the thinking is you’ll notice a fire when it’s all one room, if it’s two with the doors across a fire may develop before you notice and create a problem with egress via the room with the fire in (and risk of flashover if door to the dining room opened).

Seemed so simple when we first talked about it 🙂

You are presuming its currently complaint – it may well not be.

I removed a stud wall and a door to put the toilet in my bathroom and it was picked up when I sold the house

Oops – we’ve taken out a couple of stud walls without getting any approvals. 🙂

I moved into a property recently and put up a new stud wall with door to separate a lounge-dinner. Chippy that put it in didn’t mention anything being required.

We are soon to knock through the kitchen into the newly separated dinner, again no one has mentioned anything being needed. Maybe ignorance is bliss…

kids will have to sort the regs out, when I snuff it then……….. ;o)