The house
113B Kidmore Road is a detached house in Caversham Heights with a hipped roof, a bay window, an attached garage and a conservatory at the back. The owners wanted to replace the conservatory with a proper room that could be used all year.
The rear extension
The single storey rear extension runs across the back of the house and creates an open kitchen, living and dining area with glazed doors to the garden. Two rooflights in the flat roof bring daylight into the middle of the plan, and the layout adds a study and a utility room alongside the retained garage. The walls are finished to match the house and the roof edge is kept below the first floor windows.
The summer house
The following year we prepared a separate application for a garden summer house. It is a small single storey building of about 3 by 3.5 metres with a fully glazed gable, a pitched roof, and a door and window to the side. The site plan shows it set well away from the house, so it remains incidental to the house and has little effect on neighbours.
Building regulations
After the planning drawings, we prepared the building regulations drawings for the rear extension, covering structure, insulation, drainage and fire safety, so the builder could price and build from one consistent set.
Two applications, one plan
Treating the extension and the summer house as separate applications kept each one simple, but we planned them together so the garden still works as a whole, with open lawn kept between the house and the new building. The site plan records both, which helps if the owners ever want to make further changes and need to show the planning history. It also shows the remaining garden area clearly, which the council checks for any outbuilding.
Constraints we checked
We checked the extension against policies CC7, CC8 and H9 of the Reading Borough Local Plan on design, amenity and house extensions, including the 45 degree test to the neighbouring windows. For the summer house we checked the permitted development limits for outbuildings and the trees near the rear boundary.
