Its becoming increasingly popular to include a cloakroom with toilet or a full shower room in a garden room building, creating self contained accommodation at the end of the garden.
Many suppliers offer the option of including these facilities into their buildings, but over the last few months we have heard a few stories that concern us, mainly that some of these installations are not installed to Building Regulation standards.
A toilet & shower room needs to comply with Building Regulations
In many cases a garden room can be built without the need for Building Regulations, but once you start factoring in toilets, sewerage and water that changes.
We are hearing that not all toilet and shower room installations in garden rooms are installed to Building Regulation standards which is a real concern legally, from a safety perspective and will become an issue when you sell your house.
The Building Regulations are in place to ensure that facilities are installed to the highest standards. There is quite a lot of work needed to achieve these standards and expense. Because of this we are hearing that some of the toilets and shower rooms installed are not complying with Building Regulation standards so as to keep prices low!
How can you tell?
Adding facilities to a garden room is an expensive process. Taping into mains supply of water and sewerage or installing a septic tank will cost you several thousand pounds.
Customers are telling us that there is a significant price difference between suppliers for what appears on the surface to be the same job. The additional cost is that the more expensive supplier is installing all plumbing to Building Regulation standards.
Not an area to take shortcuts on
If you are thinking of adding a toilet or shower room to your building you have to be prepared for the cost and the upheaval the groundworks will have on your garden – its not an area of the build to take shortcuts on.
Our advice
If you are looking to include facilities into your garden room design speak to several garden room suppliers. Many of the bespoke garden room design companies build all their garden rooms to Building Regulation Codes as standard and so will be up to speed on the rules.
Be prepared that installing a toilet etc will add a few thousand pounds to the cost of your project.
