Attic/Roof Space Query

[MargOZ]

Hi, I have a miner's cottage and would love to renovate the roof space into an attic room. I can only just stand in the roof space without ducking and was wondering what the regulations are on the amount of space/head room you must have to build an attic room? I assume this type of job would require a council permit as well? (I'm sure my local council could give me some advice but I wanted to do some research first).

If anyone knows of any links/websites that have info on converting roof space into an attic room, or if anyone has any advice, it would also be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

[simopimo]

I had my roof space converted to storage. I used a company called Attic Ladders (http://www.atticladders.com.au)

They can explain all the laws, but basically you need (I think) 2M of roof space over X% of the room in order for it to qualify as a room. We didn't have enough height so we converted it to storage instead which helped reduce clutter from the rest of the house.

It was definitely worthwhile and I would recommend it to anyone, although I did have some issues with their quoting accuracy... but that's another story.

[seriph1]

g'day Marg - I have now done this conversion twice and while it DEFINIETELY needs to be well thought through, is an excellent way of getting additional space without impacting on the home's original footprint. The considerations are so many that doing it via this forum would be tedious to say the least, but it is a great starting point and the information you'll receive should be invaluable. Feel free to message me privately and I shall give you my phone number so we can have a chat about the project. IN the meantime if you want to stick up a pic of the home - its suburb and its aproximate age, style etc. That'd be a good start for folks to give some better advice. ALso, if you know the ceiling height in the rooms you wish to have your other room above, that'd be a help. I only have a very few pics of the ones I did, but youre welcome to them if you would find them helpful.

FInally, there is a range of publications about attic space conversions, but most are from the USA. They are still valuable as an ideas-generator though.

Anyway, the offer is there....

Have fun

Steve

[simopimo]

I should also mention that before we considered it, we had an engineer look at the structure... turns out our house is more than 100 years old and the ceilings weren't done properly, so we had to get 3 big laminated beams to support the ceiling/attic floor. Worked a treat!

[MargOZ]

Thanks for the reply guys. I do think the roof space isn't going to be high enough, and as I'm on a limited budget I have a feeling there will be too much work (and money!) needed to make it viable. But I plan to do some more research and get some local advice and keep my fingers crossed! Thanks for the help Steve - if I can get some good photos and measurements of the house and roof space I'll include them here as any advice is most welcome.

Thanks, Marg

[Marc]

As a matter of general interest, I built a new sun-room / laundry / bedroom bathroom as an addition to my house and when I saw the size of the beams I needed for the roof (cathedral ceilings exposed beams 12"x2" x 6.6m long I thought why not an attic?
It turns out that as long as you define it as non-livable space, you are OK. Since it was non-livable, the dimensions of the stairs can be non-standard and so substantially smaller, headroom in my case goes from 3 meters down to 0.6m and I even built another toilet in the attic and a balcony sticking out from one side over the veranda down below. Now why would I want a bathroom complete with shower in the attic and a balcony is another story.

[seriph1]

Dont be too sure it will cost big-bucks...... depending on how you approach it, it can be very inexpensive to do - you just need to get clear about the available space and the work. Although the last one I did was 20 years ago, it cost around 1/4 of what I had thought due to a range of things. Suffice to say though, that it will cost decent money - it may be most affordable though.

How's that for bloody obtuse?

Must be the heat (I am in Malaysia right now)

Cheers