Builders in Swanage

Building work in Swanage

Extending a house in Swanage, and what the rules allow

Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd builds extensions, opens up rooms with a steel beam, lays stone and brick to match, and plasters, renders and roofs the work, across Swanage, Herston and the Purbeck villages. Thomas Hannen visits for free and gives you a written itemised quote before anything is ordered.

Swanage has one planning fact that shapes every extension. The whole town sits in the Dorset National Landscape, which makes it article 2(3) land under the householder permitted development rules. On that land you cannot build a side extension, a two storey rear extension or a dormer without planning permission, and you cannot clad a wall in stone, render, timber, plastic or tiles either. A single storey rear extension within the size limits is still permitted. So the first question at our visit is which of those your plan is, because it decides whether you need drawings and an application before a builder is any use to you.

In the town centre two more checks apply. It is inside the Swanage Conservation Area, and parts of it round the Swan Brook are in flood zones 2 and 3, where an extension that needs planning also needs a flood risk assessment. The government flood risk service tells you in a minute.

The build itself

Once the route is settled the work runs in order: foundations dug and inspected, blockwork or stone to plate height, the steel in over any wide opening on padstones, the roof framed and weathered, then first fix, plaster and finish. Building control takes a building notice or full plans, inspects as it goes and issues a completion certificate. On an attached house you will usually owe a party wall notice. Our recent projects show extensions at several of those stages.

Around it we build walls and piers in matching brick or stone, plaster and render, fit kitchens and sort the drainage. For the roof alone, see the page for roofers in Swanage.

Swanage

Stone, access and the sea: what the build involves

Three things make a building job in Swanage different from the same job in Bournemouth: the stone, the roads and the sea. All three are settled at the site visit, before the quote is written.

Matching Purbeck stone

Much of the older town is built in Purbeck stone, and a stone house wants stone on any new wall people can see. Purbeck stone is still quarried on the Isle of Purbeck, so new stone can be matched for colour and bed, and reclaimed stone suits a small repair. It is laid in a lime mortar and pointed flush, with stone dust in the mix so the joint takes the colour of the wall. Behind the stone face an extension is normally blockwork, tied in, with the cavity insulated to Approved Document L. On a street elevation we build a sample panel first, so you see the match before the wall goes up.

Access on the roads

Some of Swanage's residential roads are unadopted. There a skip, a scaffold or a delivery lorry needs the agreement of whoever owns and looks after the road, not a council licence, and on the adopted streets the council licence comes first. Narrow hill roads also limit how close a lorry can get. Access decides how a tight site is run, so we look at it on the visit and plan the deliveries round it.

The seaward side

Walls and roofs facing the bay take salt and driven rain in easterly weather. An extension on that side gets stainless steel or non-ferrous fixings, a render system suited to the exposure, and window and door openings detailed for driven rain. The same extension on a sheltered street further up the hill needs less.

Flood risk in the town centre

Parts of the town centre round the Swan Brook are in flood zones 2 and 3. An extension there that needs planning permission needs a flood risk assessment, and the floor level and the materials below it follow from that. Check the address before anything is drawn.

The housing

Flats, conversions and bungalows

Flats make up 38.7% of Swanage's homes, many of them in older houses converted long ago. Building work on a converted house is shared work. The roof, the main walls, the stair and the drains usually belong to the freeholder, so an extension or a new opening needs the freeholder's consent under your lease, and a big job across the building may need a section 20 consultation with every leaseholder first.

We address the written quote to whoever is paying, so the agent has something to put to the other owners.

Bungalows extend well at the back, where a single storey rear extension is still permitted development. Going up into the roof is the harder route here, because a dormer needs planning permission everywhere in the town. Rooflights do not, so a loft room lit from rooflights is often the version that gets built. Building regulations still apply to the floor, the stair, the fire escape route and the insulation.