Moving the kitchen

[fluffytail10]

How hard is it to create a kitchen in a reception room without any water source? My kitchen is tiny and as we only ever use one reception room, I was thinking of creating a nice kitchen diner in the unused room, keeping the tiny kitchen as a utility room. I am guessing that the waste pipe from the sink might be tricky to place but I have no idea how these things work. Has anyone done this? Does it cost a fortune or is just a case of extending existing water pipes?

thanks for any help

 

[Owain]

Water supply pipes are not usually the big problem.

If you can't get hot water (because of the location of your hot water header tank) you can run mains cold to a small under-sink water heater.

However for the waste pipe you will need 40 mm waste pipe with a continuous fall. Usually not too difficult if you have a suspended ground floor but in a solid floor you may find it more difficult.

For a new kitchen you will I think now need an extractor fan or cooker hood of a specified minimum extract rate to comply with Building Regs.

 

[Me!]

Yes, drains are the main thing to consider.
Does the reception room have an outside wall? Do you own the land just outside that wall? Where is the nearest manhole, and how deep is it?
With the right answers to those questions, then all your drainage problems could be sorted out with just a few hours of work and with no disruption to the rest of the house.

The big advantage of building a new kitchen in a different room is that the old one is still functioning throughout the whole process to keep a good supply of cups of tea

 

[Keithj]

I removed the old kitchen and put in a new one in our place in Wales. It took about a month, full time, all told. Rather too much of that was chasing out granite walls for leccy conduit!

The hot and cold water supply was easy - wooden floor above the cellar, and who minds tidy pipes in a cellar? The drain was a nightmare: placcy pipe through the granite wall, but a non-standard diameter which turned out to be a Russian standard. How it got there is a mystery (shipwreck, maybe) but the local plumbers' merchant recognised it from the unusual colour, and had adapters to fit so we could keep the bit through the wall and replace the rest.

I vowed never again to work on granite!

The other pitfall was that measuring 20 times, drawing, checking, and being super-careful with position still ended up too often with two different pieces of carcass needing to be in the same space. The room was a lot further off "square" than I'd ever have imagined. It looked good when it was done, though.

 

[fluffytail10]

Ah that's really useful. I think it will be easy to get hot and cold water as I guess we can extend the pipes from the cloakroom. Yes it does have an outside wall and there is a drain cover to the cesspit outisde, but i think the council are getting our sewerage connected to the mains soon - so will it make the cesspit unusable? or could we still run water into it?

Also are there any rules regarding situation of sink and cooker? When I lived in edinburgh I remember being told that sinks are not allowed in front of windows any more as they steal the light?!! Would the cooker have to be on an outside wall for an extractor fan. In our old kitchen the cooker is the other end of the room to the extractor.

We also have a solid floor so no cellar for pipes sadly, they would have to run round the walls. I'm thinking of going for free standing units - though floor levels may be a problem - mind you I have gotten used to having a brick under one corner of the sideboard!

 

[Me!]

I think it will be easy to get hot and cold water as I guess we can extend the pipes from the cloakroom.

You will need to check first as the cold water in a cloakroom may (or may not) be fed from a tank in the loft. In a kitchen, you do need to have cold water direct from the mains.

 

[Zebra]

I'm not aware that sinks cannot be under the window. That doesn't sound right. Cookers don't have to be on an outside wall. You can have an extractor hood which either recirculates the air rather than extracts, or has ducting to an outside wall. Building Regs do require that there be an extractor of a certain number of litres per minute, as Owain says. This can either be the cooker hood or a separate fan.
You may need to run extra cables. The cooker may need its own supply, and a kitchen really ought to have its own ring circuit, not be on with the rest of the house, although you may get away with this if the house is only small.
When planning the position of electrical outlets, be aware that there must not be a socket or switch or anything like that within 300mm horizontally of either the sink or the cooker. Strictness about the application of this rule can vary!

 

[fluffytail10]

Well I didn't know any of that, thanks Zebra. At the moment we have sockets next to the sink above the cooker - all over. also the ring main thing is interesting. Maybe we don't have one at moment which is why all the sockets keep blowing and the lights dim when we turn the cooker on!

 

[mims&pip]

The idea of not being allowed a kitchen sink in front of a window is very strange :shock: Never heard of that one and have done several restoration projects where the kitchen sink has been situated in front of a window.....not in Scotland though, so perhaps it is peculiar to there :roll:

Regarding building regs and extractors etc - at our last house we built a large-ish extension onto the kitchen (well, actually there was no kitchen and this room was originally a hall of around 16' x 10', but it became our kitchen :wink: ) and we employed an independent building inspector. The room once extended was approximately 36' x 16', narrowing to 10' and at the new end we fitted our kitchen cabinets, range cooker etc. Although we built a fake chimney breast with mantel shelf etc incorporating reclaimed corbels, we did not fit (or want) an extractor. Our independent building inspector made several visits during the course of the building work and again to sign off when this and the other works we were doing were complete, but at no point did the subject of extractors - or separate fans for that matter - come up :roll:

When we sold last year no-one mentioned extractors either.....

Not sure if that's an advantage of not using the council building control or not???

Mims x