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Hepburn Installations

Southampton, Hampshire

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‘19 Certificate of Excellence, 2019

About

At Hepburn's we pride ourselves in providing the best possible service to our customers.

We are able to take on most job enquiries from building flatpack furniture to loft & garage conversions.

We focus on quality and will always try and do this at the best possible price.

Reviews (2)

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4.5/5

2 customer reviews

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1 September 2017

We have contacted them for a fence replacement. I am very please with the quality of the work and the professionalism offered. The work was done at a high level and in good time. I would recommend this company without hesitation . More...

29 August 2017

Very friendly and helpful. Constructed a shed for us and happily undertook old jobs at a good price. Would use again and recommend.

Q&As

A standard-sized single garage can give you around 14m² of extra space, so is ideal if you are looking for somewhere to house a home office, playroom or guest bedroom — or even a downstairs shower room and utility. It might also offer the potential to extend an existing space, such as your kitchen or hallway, depending on the layout of your home.

A double garage can add around 28m² and gives you the option of using part of the space for storage or still as a garage and the rest as living space. The same goes for ‘tandem’ garages.

Check for any restrictive covenants or clauses that may prevent you from making changes that alter the external appearance of your home. Even if you find you are subject to such restrictions, you may still be able to convert the space, retaining the front section for storage and converting the rear area.

To find out if there may be an issue, ring your local planning department and give them your address. They can usually tell you over the phone there and then if you are in a Conservation Area or if there are any restrictive covenants that will mean you need planning permission.

Before work begins, you or your builder must also submit a Building Notice to your local authority or private building control company (this costs in the region of £325). They will visit throughout the garage conversion to check you are meeting Building Regulations and issue a final certificate to sign the work off at the end.

Foundations:
You should expect when carrying out a garage conversion to have to take up a part of the foundations in order to erect a wall where the garage door would previously have been. A neat, simple solution to avoid great volumes of excavation, muck away, and concrete foundations is to set lintels just below ground level which are able to bear on sound masonry or existing foundations on each end.

Floor:
Due to fire regulations, it is likely that the floor in the garage will be set noticeably lower down than the floor across the rest of the ground level. This floor will have to be raised to come into line with the rest of the house. When raising the floor level, the floor will need to be protected from rising damp and insulated to a certain degree too. It is not required by building regulations that the floor in the garage conversion is brought into line with the rest of the house, but it is usually considered good practice to do so in order to make it feel more like part of the rest of the home.

Walls:
Some will be lucky enough to have a fully integral garage with walls fit for use in a living space. However, many will find that it is necessary to bring a single brick course wall up to the building regulations standards insofar as moisture and insulation are concerned. The weatherproofing and insulation of outside walls can be carried out in numerous ways, but a good solution is to create an independent stud wall built off a damp course on top of a couple of courses of bricks laid 75mm clear of the external wall. The space between the two walls will easily accommodate services and insulating materials before the plasterboard is fitted.

Windows:
The windows you fit to your garage conversion will not require planning permission, but under today’s regulations they will need to be double glazed and energy efficient. For aesthetic purposes, it is best to choose designs similar to, or the same as, those used around the rest of the house. If building control deems the new room to be an inner room, meaning that it is accessed via another room rather than a separate hallway, then one of its windows must be large enough for inhabitants to escape through in the event of a fire.

Ventilation and Insulation:
Ventilation will need to be arranged via air bricks or trickle vents, and the walls, floor, and roof will need to be insulated to a degree set out by building regulations.

Heating:
The heating system used in the new room will depend upon both the existing heating system and the depth of the floor in the garage conversion. A floor which is at least 150mm deep can accommodate a wet underfloor heating system as part of the existing heating set-up in the rest of the house. If the floor is of a depth below 150mm then an electric underfloor heating system can be considered, or else additional radiators can be added to the existing system. Always check with your heating engineer that your current boiler can cope with an additional radiator before adding one to the system.

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