Open-Plan Conversions Hemel Hempstead

GS Renovation opens up ground floors in Hemel Hempstead, taking out the walls between kitchen, dining and living space and carrying the load on steel. The house decides the method, and Hemel Hempstead holds two very different kinds of house. We appoint the engineer, build to the design, and finish the room rather than handing it over as a shell.

For Hemel Hempstead, on London-derived ranges a knock-through finished as one room typically costs £3,000 to £8,000 or more, including the steel beam; Hertfordshire work generally runs below that. GS Renovation Ltd, a building contractor based in Potters Bar, does the work in Hemel Hempstead: the structural engineer we appoint designs the steel, we install it, and building control signs it off.

How the job runs

1. Free site survey at your Hemel Hempstead address, covering the walls, services and floor levels, and an itemised quote.
2. The engineer we appoint sizes the beam, and the work is registered with Hertfordshire Building Control or an approved inspector. On a shared wall you serve the party wall notice as building owner; we supply the drawings.
3. Props in, opening cut, beam on padstones; then floors, heating and electrics are joined up.
4. Building control inspects the steel before it is covered. We finish the room, and the completion certificate follows.

Which New Town neighbourhood the house came from

It changes what you find behind the plaster. Hemel Hempstead officially became a New Town on 4 February 1947. The first new residents moved into Adeyfield in February 1950, the first four families on 8 February 1950. By autumn 1952, 300 houses at Bennetts End were occupied. Grovehill began construction in 1967 and was completed in stages by the early 1980s, and Woodhall Farm was built in the mid to late 1970s, on the former Brock's fireworks site.

Thirty years separate the earliest of those neighbourhoods from the latest, and construction changed a great deal over that period. Floor construction, wall build-ups and roof structure in a 1950 house are not those of a 1975 house. We survey the actual building rather than working from the address, and the engineer's design follows what is found once the ceiling and floor are opened.

Housing in Hemel Hempstead

The Council Tax list puts Hemel Hempstead at about 41,110 homes, 31% flats against 69% houses; 5% went up before 1919, 6% between the wars and 89% after 1945. 39% of homes here are terraced; opening up a terrace in Hemel Hempstead usually lands one beam end on the party wall.

Opening up on the Old Town High Street

There the structure is older and less predictable. The character statement records that the local vernacular is hidden behind plaster, render or brick, with earlier timber framed buildings refronted or partially rebuilt. It also records that exposed timber framing is rare, frames having been modernised with the addition of 18th or 19th century brick skins. Opening a wall there can expose a historic frame rather than the masonry a drawing assumed.

Plan form matters as well. The character statement identifies the historic grain of plot division, with small buildings running down the plot rather than across it, as a very important part of the Old Town's character. It describes rear extensions to High Street buildings as tall narrow gables projecting perpendicular to the building line. An open plan layout in a footprint like that is a long narrow space, and the steel arrangement has to suit it.

Permitted development limits inside the conservation area

Two limits catch open plan projects that also extend. In the Hemel Hempstead conservation area, planning permission is required for any extension that would extend beyond a wall forming a side elevation of the original house. Permission is also required for an extension of more than one storey that would extend beyond the rear wall of the original house. If your knock through is paired with a side return or a two storey rear addition, that is a planning application before it is a structural job.

Purely internal work is a different matter, dealt with under Building Regulations. We separate the two at survey, so you know which consents apply and in what order. Where an application is needed, the structural design is prepared to suit the scheme that gets permission, rather than the other way round.

• Beam depth checked against existing ceiling heights
• Zoned lighting circuits and dimming for a multi-use room
• Bi-fold and sliding door openings onto the garden

VOA Council Tax stock of properties, March 2025, for all 12 statistical areas in Hemel Hempstead. Counts rounded by the VOA.

Once the open-plan conversion work in Hemel Hempstead is scoped, people usually go on to read home renovation in Hemel Hempstead, open-plan conversion in Berkhamsted, side return infills, converting a garage into living space, our London open-plan conversion page and RSJ & Load-Bearing Walls.

Trusted Open-Plan Conversions in Hemel Hempstead

An open plan ground floor is several jobs in one order, and GS Renovation carries all of them: the engineer we appoint, the steel, the flooring, the ceilings, the electrics and lighting, the kitchen fit and the decoration. That means the people who opened the room are the people who level, square and finish it, so there is no gap where one trade blames another. We are fully insured, registered in England under company number 14611254, and rated 4.9 from 31 reviews on MyBuilder.

Checked by Abdelaaziz Saaid, founder and director of GS Renovation Ltd (Companies House no. 14611254). Structural design is by the consulting engineer appointed to your project.