12 things to know about floor structures

Chartered surveyor Ian Rock offers a self-builder's guide to getting the ground under your feet structurally sound

- IAN ROCK

Few things are as important in any homebuilding project as ensuring the ground under your feet is stable, level, and generally fit for purpose. Unless floor structures are carefully designed and built you could end up with uneven, sloping, or springy floors in need of expensive remedial work. So before finalizing your design it's worth taking a look at the main options for floor construction and how the choices you make can have an important impact on the rest of the build.

1 Relate floor construction to design early on

The positioning of the upper floors will dictate how much residual headroom you have in the rooms below. Therefore it's essential at the design stage to factor in the full depth of the floor structures - including boardings and coverings, ceilings, and plasterwork. It's equally important to calculate the finished surface height of ground floors once fully insulated and screeded with floor coverings in place. There can be additional challenges with extensions where floor levels need to be aligned so you don't end up with awkward steps between the main house and the new accommodation. Detailed section drawings are invaluable for assessing the available vertical space, bearing in mind that there may be planning restrictions on roof heights that can potentially constrain the dimensions of top-floor rooms.

Another factor that can easily get overlooked at the design stage is the need to accommodate pipework and ducting for ventilation, heating, and hot water systems within new floors.

2 Building Regs compliance