Property types
Maisonette bathroom refits and plumbing
The short answer
A maisonette bathroom refit is shaped by the shared soil stack, the flat below and any lease terms. The toilet normally stays close to the stack, and waterproofing matters more than in a house because a leak affects a neighbour's ceiling as well as your own. Maisonettes typically span two floors within a larger block, and the bathroom's waste connection depends heavily on whether it sits on the entry level or the upper floor of the unit. Shared structure with neighbouring maisonettes above or below means any change to pipe routes needs checking against what is directly overhead or underneath, not just within your own unit.
What the building imposes
An upper-floor bathroom in a maisonette usually drops waste down through the floor to connect with a stack shared with the maisonette below, so timing of noisy work is worth agreeing with neighbours.
Communal or shared soil stacks serving several maisonettes mean a blockage can sometimes originate outside your own unit, so it helps to know where the nearest inspection point is before assuming a fault is internal.
Structural floors between levels in a maisonette are usually concrete, which limits where new pipe runs can be chased compared with a timber-floored house.
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Frequently asked
Who is responsible for a shared stack in a maisonette block?
This depends on the lease and management arrangement for the block, and is worth checking before commissioning any work on a stack serving more than one unit.
Can an en-suite be added to a maisonette bedroom?
It depends on where the existing stack runs relative to the bedroom and whether the concrete floor structure allows a new waste connection to be formed.
Can I move the toilet in a maisonette?
Only as far as a waste route to the shared stack allows, which is checked on the survey.
Is a wet room possible in an upstairs maisonette?
Sometimes, depending on the floor build-up and drainage, but it needs careful tanking because of the flat below.
Before you refit a maisonette bathroom
Check your lease for any need to notify the freeholder or other owners before work starts. Knowing who is responsible for the shared stack avoids arguments if something is found once the boxing is removed.
Inside the flat, the usual upgrades are a shower in place of a bath, better extraction and tidier boxing around pipework. We plan them around the fixed stack position so the finished layout drains properly.
Want this scoped properly before you commit?
We look at the room, check the services, and put the scope in writing so you can compare like with like.
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Covering Gloucester, Cheltenham, Tewkesbury, Stroud, Malvern, Ledbury, Newent and Ross-on-Wye