How do I create more office space?

How do I create more office space? How do I create more office space? Is a question we get asked regularly. There are many things you can do inside an office and the requirements maybe to fit more people, to open out the space as it is too cramped. If the building has height that can be used then the introduction of a mezzanine floor is very cost effective if the customer has the space. What is a mezzanine floor? Many shops, offices and warehouses make use of the height of a building to increase the floor area without the need to extend the building. The simplest way to do this is by building a false floor across any void. Focusing on offices and warehouses there are stringent rules and legal regulations that apply to the construction and fire protection of mezzanine floors, the aim of the rules is to ensure that people in the offices working above or below can get out safely in the event of a problem, usually a fire. We do come across structures that have been built by general builders and there is no way that anyone would survive a fire if one took hold and the floor would collapse. What are Building Regulations for a mezzanine floor? It is very important for any Business Owner to get a floor installed properly, and one that meets the Building regulations as the Business Owner would ultimately be responsible if the worst happened and people lost their lives. Lack of knowledge is no defence. If the construction work does not comply with Building Regulations and the floor has not been signed off by an Inspector then the Law has being broken, quite simple really. The design of the floor is crucial, as well as taking into consideration the use of the floor, travel distances are really important to fire exits, if over a certain distance then the exit routes need to be protected out of the building. The actual floor itself is made from steel. The steel is stressed steel in rolled formed sections or beams, with timber floors. The whole structure is stressed with triangular support pillars usually at the corner to ensure the floor does not twist. You may think steel is fine in a fire, steel does not catch fire until extremely high temperatures, but it is not the catching fire that causes the problem. If a fire gets hold even in a small area at one end of a floor the steel will start to bend, it’s structural properties start to change and as the mezzanine floor is stressed it will twist and collapse very quickly. Fir protection to the columns and floor is therefore important particularly if there are offices or people up on the mezzanine floor level. How much weight can a Mezzanine Floor take? It is actually quite important to understand the purpose of the floor as the structure will be designed to take certain weights. General light storage and offices mean that the beams can be thinner and therefore cheaper. If you storing a bit of weight on the floor then we need to know. We have two grades that will be fine on a normal floor but if there is considerable weight needed to be supported the beams get alot bigger reducing the head room below and the structural slab of the floor will need to be assessed and taking into consideration in the design to ensure that the support pillars can take the weight and do not disappear into the ground. What Mezzanine Floor projects has Cre8tive Interiors carried out? Some of the projects we do are just purely floors, so maybe for storage or for sorting out the fire protection. Other projects are wider in scope and the floor is only one aspect of what the customer wants to achieve overall. There are some links below. Mezzanine floor in Devizes (light storage) Fire rating of a Mezzanine Floor in Warminster for Offices Fire rating of a Mezzanine Floor in Milton Keynes for Offices Converting / Fire rating an existing storage mezzanine in Corsham for use into Offices Installation of a new mezzanine floor into an existing warehouse to create offices in Gloucester Installation of a new mezzanine floor to extend existing offices at first floor level and below in Salisbury Construction of Fire rated partitions on top of an existing mezzanine floor to meet Building Regulation in Corsham

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