M&E drawings in Kensington and Chelsea

Townhouses, mansion flats and what they cost to rework

The average terraced house in the borough sold for £2,429,086. After finishes, a rework is a very expensive mistake at that value. Prices moved by -14.1 per cent over twelve months, but owners are improving homes they intend to keep.

With owner-occupiers at 31.7 per cent of households, many projects involve a freeholder, a managing agent or a Residents' Association. We keep the M&E set tidy enough to attach to a licence application: each penetration, riser and plant location is labelled.

Mansion blocks bring a different problem: shared flues, shared risers and lease clauses that limit what an owner may drill. Before any layout we read the lease plan and the building services history if the managing agent has them, and we draw a riser schedule that states which route each new duct or cable takes and whether it uses an existing opening.

Listed homes, Article 4 areas and trees

The borough has 39 conservation areas, 1,350 listed building entries and 116 at Grade II*. There are 84 Article 4 directions, 16 registered parks and gardens and 4,560 tree preservation orders. External plant, flue terminals and louvres on a front or garden elevation are the items most likely to be refused, so the drawings put them in lightwells, closets and rear returns.

Inside a listed building, chasing a cable or cutting an extract through a plaster ceiling touches historic fabric. We mark every penetration on the plan so the heritage statement can describe it and the officer can see it was thought through.

Trees complicate cable routes in garden squares and rear gardens. A drain or duct trench cut through a root zone can damage a protected tree, so the layout keeps to existing hard surfaces where it can and shows root protection areas when the arboricultural report supplies them.

Planning figures in context

The council decided 664 householder applications in its latest year, granted 93.7 per cent and decided 91.9 per cent in time. It handled 25 lawful development certificate applications. We use the figures for planning a programme and never as a forecast of any result.

Timing on site is the practical concern. Streets here often have parking restrictions, working-hours conditions and neighbours who live inches from the wall, so a trade that has to return because a duct was missed costs more than the same trade elsewhere. A services set that every installer has seen before work starts removes most of that waste, and it gives the project manager one document to check against each delivery.

The figures on every sheet

A kitchen with a hood extracting outside needs 30 l/s, and a bathroom 15 l/s. A five-bedroom townhouse needs 43 l/s for the whole dwelling under Approved Document F.

Alarm positions follow BS EN 50291-1:2018, with the alarm at least 300 mm from the wall when ceiling mounted. Electrical work is notifiable for new circuit; consumer unit replacement; additions or alterations to circuits in a special location.

Scope, fee and where to go next

A Kensington and Chelsea set normally holds power and lighting plans, ventilation with fan duties, alarms, a consumer unit schematic and basement drainage and pump detail. There is no published starting price. We run a free constraints check, agree the scope and fix the fee.

Read architectural drawings in Kensington and Chelsea for the borough picture, the national guide at M&E drawings, or the broader service at MEP design. Basements are also covered by plumbing and drainage drawings.