GS Renovation opens up Mill Hill houses, from the compartmented interwar semis near the Broadway to the wide detached homes where the ground floor can lose most of its internal walls at once. With more than 30 years of hands on structural experience in NW7, we handle the steel, the stability, the fire escape strategy and Barnet building control.
Open plan in a wide Mill Hill house
The larger detached houses here take open plan well, because there is real width to work with. The catch is that same width. Removing the wall between the receptions and then the wall through to the kitchen takes out two lines of masonry that were bracing the house against sideways load as well as holding the floor up. The engineer looks at stability, not only at the beam, and the answer is often a goalpost frame with columns rather than a beam perched on a slender return of brickwork at one end.
Where the openings meet, the detail matters. A beam landing on another beam needs a connection designed by the engineer, and columns need a pad foundation dug beneath the floor rather than a padstone sitting on a slab that was never meant to take that load. Broken plan usually works better than one enormous room in these houses anyway. A retained nib, a Crittall style screen or a change in ceiling level keeps kitchen noise out of the sitting area while the light still runs the length of the plan.
Fire escape and sign off in NW7
The rule that trips people up is the escape route. In a two storey house the staircase should discharge into a hall separated from the rest of the ground floor, so knocking the hall into the kitchen puts your escape route straight through the room most likely to be on fire. Building control will want that resolved before it signs anything off, usually with interlinked mains powered detection throughout, sometimes by keeping a protected route elsewhere, occasionally with an escape window. Far easier to design at the start than to argue about at completion.
The rest we run as one package. Barnet Council's building control, or an approved inspector, inspects the beam bearings and the connections before they are boarded. Structural steel in a house normally needs 30 minutes of fire protection, which in practice is two layers of plasterboard rather than a skim coat over a bare flange. In a detached Mill Hill house there is often no party wall duty at all; in one of the paired houses near the Broadway there usually is, and we prepare the notice for you to serve.
- Heat loss and acoustic considerations before the wall comes out
- Rooflights and glazed roofs to bring light deep into the plan
- Beam depth checked against existing ceiling heights
- Knock-throughs between front and rear reception rooms
- Level flooring and threshold removal across the whole space
Why Choose GS Renovation in Mill Hill
Mill Hill owners choose us for open plan because we think about the whole ground floor rather than just the hole in the wall. Stability, the fire escape route, the beam connections and the finished ceiling line are considered together, built to the structural engineer's calculations and inspected by Barnet Council's building control. One team, one programme, and a house that stays liveable while the messy stage happens.
- Building control applications and inspections coordinated for you
- Straight advice on what is and is not worth spending money on
- Lighting circuits zoned rather than one pendant in the middle
- One point of contact on the phone, not a call centre
- Floor levels and thresholds evened out across the whole space
- Structural engineer instructed and coordinated on your behalf