Bathroom
renovation
in Camden Town, NW1
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A Camden Town bathroom is often tucked into a back addition, a top floor under the slates or a flat made from a family house, and each has its own route for the waste.
Camden Square's appraisal traces how many of its houses were subdivided for multiple occupancy, and how in the later 20th century substantial houses were converted from that use into self-contained flats or maisonettes.
For each bathroom we trace the soil stack, the floor it stands on and the room underneath before a fitting is chosen, because in a divided house those often belong to more than one home.
Source: Camden: Camden Square Conservation Area Appraisal and Management Strategy (adopted 11 March 2011)
Soil pipes and the street front
Camden's advice for Camden Square is that soil and vent pipes, like flues and new chimneys, go on a side or rear elevation so the public face of the building is left alone.
The Home Improvements guidance makes the same point for the whole borough: keep new pipework to the side and back where you can, bunched in one discreet run.
For a house in a conservation area, a new pipe on a wall or roof slope fronting a highway, on the main or side elevation, would need planning permission, it adds.
We route a new waste inside the house to the existing stack wherever the falls allow, so nothing new appears on the front.
Sources: Camden: Camden Square Conservation Area Appraisal and Management Strategy (adopted 11 March 2011), Camden Council: Home Improvements, Camden Planning Guidance (January 2021)
When building regulations apply
Building control can be involved: GOV.UK names a new bathroom with plumbing, and electrical changes close to a bath or shower, among alterations that might need approval.
Swapping an old basin, WC, bath or sink for a new one sits on the government's list of exempt work.
Approved Document F asks that fans already in the room be kept or renewed and their working checked; if there was never any ventilation, none has to be added unless the work leaves the room less compliant than before.
Sources: GOV.UK: Building regulations approval, GOV.UK: when you don't need building regulations approval, Approved Document F, Volume 1: Dwellings (2021 edition)
Large baths and the floor beneath
Regulation 5 of the water fittings rules makes anyone planning a bath of over 230 litres, measured to the overflow centre line, notify the water undertaker and wait for its consent.
A full cast iron bath on old joists needs the floor checked and often strengthened; we open it up before ordering.
Source: The Water Supply (Water Fittings) Regulations 1999, regulation 5
Leases, shared floors and the flat below
LEASE warns that the lease itself may require the landlord's consent to alterations, quite apart from planning or building regulations approval.
If the floor or ceiling between flats belongs to the landlord, heating pipes laid through it into another flat need the landlord's agreement.
Some leases forbid cutting into external walls, which would block a new hole for a waste or vent.
It is unlawful, LEASE says, for a landlord to demand a premium for licensing a non-structural alteration, whatever the lease provides.
Sources: LEASE: alterations and home improvements, LEASE: Alterations and home improvements
Bathrooms in houses that became flats
At Mornington Crescent the appraisal links an adverse change in the terraces' looks to the high number of houses in multiple occupation.
Many of Bayham Street's modest terraces have been in multiple occupation since the 1860s.
Further up Camden Road the taller houses, three storeys on semi-basements, are in many cases subdivided into flats.
Where earlier conversions stacked bathrooms badly, we map every room above and below before moving ours.
Sources: Camden: Camden Town Conservation Area Appraisal and Management Strategy (adopted 4 October 2007), Camden: Camden Square Conservation Area Appraisal and Management Strategy (adopted 11 March 2011)
Bathrooms under the roof
On Arlington Road north of Mornington Street, the top floor is the slate roof itself, carried down at the back from a valley behind the parapet.
Camden's rooflight rule tightens in conservation areas: there the window should lie flush with the slates rather than project up to 0.15 metres.
A shower under a sloping ceiling goes where the headroom is greatest, with the extract fan ducted out on the rear slope.
Sources: Camden: Camden Town Conservation Area Appraisal and Management Strategy (adopted 4 October 2007), Camden Planning Guidance: Home Improvements (January 2021)
A shower room on the lower ground floor
Around the square, the 2011 appraisal describes semi-basement houses whose front doors are reached up steep steps.
A lower-ground shower room often sits below the main drain, so it needs a pumped waste with an alarm, which we place where it can be serviced.
Source: Camden: Camden Square Conservation Area Appraisal and Management Strategy (adopted 11 March 2011)
Bathrooms in listed terraces
Crowndale Road's south side has a listed terrace, Nos 31 to 53, put up in the 1840s.
Camden treats unauthorised work to a listed building as a criminal offence, ignorance of the listing being no defence, and its protection runs through the interior and later additions.
In a listed house we keep panelling, skirtings and doors in place and run pipes in the floor void rather than chasing walls.
Sources: Camden: Camden Town Conservation Area Appraisal and Management Strategy (adopted 4 October 2007), Camden Council: Listed buildings
Sash windows in a wet room
Repair before replacement is Camden's line on historic windows, which it says can last indefinitely when maintained, with a joiner called in now and then.
If secondary glazing goes in, the 2011 strategy wants its meeting rails at the same height as those of the sash outside.
Frosted film or a fixed inner panel gives privacy without replacing the original glass of a bathroom sash.
Source: Camden: Camden Square Conservation Area Appraisal and Management Strategy (adopted 11 March 2011)
Keeping the household going
Chasing, drilling and breaking out old tiles count as noisy work, which Camden confines to weekdays between eight and six and to Saturday mornings until one.
When the bathroom being stripped is the household's only one, a temporary WC and shower are arranged before strip-out begins, and the supply is isolated only while each connection is made.
Source: Camden Council: noisy building works
Bathroom questions for Camden Town
Does a new bathroom need building regulations approval?
Possibly: GOV.UK lists plumbing in a new bathroom and altering electrics beside a bath or shower as work that might need it.
Can the soil pipe go on the front wall?
In a conservation area a new pipe on a street-facing wall needs planning permission, and Camden's guidance sends it to the side or back.
Do I need consent to fit a large bath?
From the water undertaker, for any bath over 230 litres measured to the overflow.
Can my landlord charge for consent to a new bathroom?
LEASE says a premium for consent to a non-structural alteration is against the law.
Do I need listed building consent for a bathroom in a listed house?
Ask before starting: Camden's protection covers the whole of a listed building, and that consent is separate from planning permission.
How much does a bathroom renovation in Camden Town cost?
A bathroom in a back addition, one under the slates and one in a flat made from a family house each have a different route for the waste, and that route drives the cost. Floor strength, the extract and, in a divided house, access through shared parts come next, followed by the tiles and fittings you choose. In a flat the lease may add conditions of its own. Our figure comes after a visit to the room, an agreed scope and specification, and then a written quotation.
Sources: GOV.UK: Building regulations approval, Camden Council: Home Improvements, Camden Planning Guidance (January 2021), Camden: Camden Square Conservation Area Appraisal and Management Strategy (adopted 11 March 2011), The Water Supply (Water Fittings) Regulations 1999, regulation 5, LEASE: Alterations and home improvements, Camden Council: Listed buildings
Related pages
Sources
- Camden: Camden Square Conservation Area Appraisal and Management Strategy (adopted 11 March 2011)
- Camden Council: Home Improvements, Camden Planning Guidance (January 2021)
- GOV.UK: Building regulations approval
- GOV.UK: when you don't need building regulations approval
- Approved Document F, Volume 1: Dwellings (2021 edition)
- The Water Supply (Water Fittings) Regulations 1999, regulation 5
- LEASE: alterations and home improvements
- Camden: Camden Town Conservation Area Appraisal and Management Strategy (adopted 4 October 2007)
- Camden Council: Listed buildings
- Camden Council: noisy building works
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