Loft Conversions in Coventry, priced in writing before anything starts.
The first question on a Coventry loft is which roof you have, because the city has both kinds in quantity and they are completely different jobs.
The Victorian and Edwardian terraces have cut roofs: rafters and purlins, with space between them that can be opened up and strengthened. These are usually the better conversions, when the head height is there. Measure before you get attached to the idea, because a steep roof can look generous from the loft hatch and still leave you short of two metres along the walking line once the floor build up and the insulation are in.
The interwar and post-war housing out through Tile Hill, Wyken and Cheylesmore is largely trussed. A trussed roof has no usable space until the structure is reworked, and reworking it is a proper structural job rather than a matter of boarding out. It is entirely doable and we do it regularly, but anybody quoting a trussed roof at the same rate as a cut roof has not been up there.
The permitted development volume allowance is forty cubic metres on a terrace and fifty on a semi or detached house. A dormer on the roof slope facing the road is not permitted development anywhere, and inside one of Coventry’s conservation areas anything that changes the roofline the street can see will be looked at closely. Rear dormers and rooflights are a far easier conversation.
Our loft conversion page goes through the structural options and the order the work happens in.
Four things we commit to on every job, rather than four things we say about ourselves.
Permitted development is not an exemption from Building Regulations. We arrange the Coventry City Council inspections, meet the inspector on site at each stage and see the work through to sign off. We do not make the application itself, and we will tell you what is needed and when.
Free, and you get it before you commit to us. Party walls and skip licences are raised at quotation stage, not three weeks into the dig.
The same people do the groundworks, the brickwork and the fit out. Nobody hands your job to a subcontractor you have never met.
You get a straight answer rather than a padded price. It costs us a job occasionally and saves you a great deal more.
Process, specification and what moves the price are set out on our loft conversions page.
The answers that genuinely differ from one Coventry street to the next.
Most loft material goes up through the house, which suits a terrace with no side access. Steels are the exception: where the beams will not go up the stairs they come in through the roof, which means a lift and a part day road closure. On a Coventry street with a residents’ parking scheme that needs arranging in advance, and we price it in rather than springing it on you.
On a terrace or a semi there is a further step that is easy to overlook. Where the new floor beams bear onto a wall you share with a neighbour, that is notifiable work under the Party Wall Act and it needs serving properly before anything starts. It is not an obstacle, most awards go through without argument, but the notice periods are fixed and they are the single most common reason a loft conversion sits waiting for a start date it could have kept.
Part of our wider building work in Coventry.
Send photographs and a rough brief, or call and talk it through. We will tell you if a job is not right for us.
Southfield Construction (Rugby) Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company 14209138.
