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Attaching the loggia to the room with your own hands

Create your own outdoor oasis with an attached loggia! This post offers a detailed guide on how to attach a loggia to any room in your home, so you can enjoy a beautiful, private retreat. The finished product provides a peaceful outdoor environment, complete with comfort, fresh air, and plenty of natural light. The process is simple, with a step-by-step overview of the materials and tools necessary, as well as methods for attaching the loggia to your wall and flooring. This handy guide is sure to help turn any space into a cozy outdoor living space!

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After joining, the functionality of the loggia increases by an order of magnitude, but there are not always opportunities for this. Today we will describe the main points that you will have to face when re-equipping a loggia, we will help you avoid mistakes and commit useless actions.

Attaching the loggia to the room with your own hands

Introductory part

The operating modes of the loggia connected and insulated, but separated by balcony glazing, are very different. In both cases, external warm glazing and a high-quality thermal protection belt are formed, regardless of the presence of a balcony block, additional heating is arranged on the loggia. However, the cost and duration of the loggia reaching the thermal regime will be very different..

Attaching the loggia to the room with your own hands

Loggia is a room with a small internal volume and low energy efficiency of the enclosing structures. Because of this, even if the air and surfaces are heated to acceptable temperatures, after turning off the heating, the heat from the closed room will evaporate in a couple of hours. Connection, as a rule, is carried out with the aim of using excess room heat to equalize the temperatures in the combined room. At the same time, you should not harbor unnecessary illusions: the temperature will always be several degrees lower compared to the rooms to which the loggia did not join.

Attaching the loggia to the room with your own hands

Therefore, it is important to answer the question in advance: is it worth attaching your own loggia? On the one hand, one should not expect that the very fact of the presence of balcony glazing will not interfere with comfortably using the loggia, keeping the door constantly open. In this case, the service life of a heavy sash will not exceed a year, while the sill will constantly interfere with walking. On the other hand, there is no point in joining if they smoke on the loggia, or it is necessary to preserve a separate noise protection circuit, or if the design of the loggia does not initially allow it to be insulated with high quality.

Do I need approval in the BTI

Many are interested in the question of the legality of joining the loggia. For some reason, most believe that this event is directly related to redevelopment, although the difference between redevelopment and re-equipment of premises is not clear to such people. Explaining: reorganization means making changes to the technical passport of the apartment, while the re-equipment only concerns the improvement of living conditions.

The subtleties of the differences between these concepts could have been for a long time, but the housing code clearly indicates measures in which approval is not required, this, among other things, applies to the glazing of the loggia. In short, all the alterations allowed for execution are distinguished by the absence of the need to mark them in the technical passport of the apartment. The reason is simple: in the documentation, the nodes that the alteration concerns are simply not marked or indicated without detailed illustrations, respectively, there is no way to establish the very fact of the re-equipment.

Attaching the loggia to the room with your own hands

As for the internal glazing of the loggia, its presence can be provided for by the project of an apartment building. However, the description of this unit is usually not detailed, which means that it is impossible to reliably establish the dimensions of the opening, its configuration and heat-saving characteristics. An attempt to agree on the connection of a loggia requires substantiation that the total thermal resistance of the enclosing structures will not be higher than the reduced resistance of the balcony block. This approach requires the preparation of a reorganization project, its assurance in the research institute that has developed the project of the house, for which it will be necessary to pass more than a dozen examinations. Usually they do it easier: the loggia is attached, in fact, arbitrarily, while maintaining the general shape of the opening with minor modifications. Well, the very absence of a balcony block can be quite simply โ€œexplainedโ€ by purchasing the cheapest โ€œCโ€ class frame and installing it at the time of acceptance by a non-capital method.

Parapet and glazing device

To make the use of the loggia as comfortable as possible, you should preserve the maximum usable area, and if possible, even increase it. One of the ways to do this is to reorganize the parapet with a change in the degree of its removal and an increase in resistance to wind loads..

A typical and many times discussed problem of typical apartment buildings is the inability to install the glazing of the loggia by default, fitting into the cut of the enclosing structures. Usually, the fence is too far outward, due to which the ends of the frames, after installation, communicate with the outdoor environment. The inward shift of the parapet is only needed by a few centimeters, but with a minimum masonry thickness of 120 mm, significant losses in the width of the loggia occur. If you dismantle the old fence and build a new one, the space can not only be saved, but even expanded..

Attaching the loggia to the room with your own hands

The erection of a new parapet is especially important for long loggias where the glazing base is not strong enough to resist wind blows. If the frames are installed on thin-seam masonry, it will be possible to correctly fix them on all sides of the abutment and to provide high-quality thermal insulation of the profile from the walls, ceiling and parapet with a technological foam seam with a thickness of at least 20 mm. Since glazing is the main path of heat leakage, this nuance needs to be given the most careful attention..

Attaching the loggia to the room with your own hands

The glazing front itself is better formed from PVC frames 60โ€“75 mm thick. For regions with a temperate climate, it will be enough to install two-chamber double-glazed windows, in the same place where the average temperature of a cold five-day period is below -25 ยฐ C, three-chamber windows with low-emission glasses cannot be avoided. The glazing of the attached loggia has the same functions as room windows, that is, it is necessary to have tilt-and-turn sashes with a micro-ventilation mode.

Completion of the opening

Another way to improve the usability of the attached loggia is to widen the opening or change the thickness of the โ€œwarmโ€ wall. As already mentioned, the balcony block is noted in the data sheet without a sweep, which means that changes of this kind have no practical opportunity to be recorded..

When changing the configuration of the opening, you should not completely remove the window sill, otherwise there will be difficulties with the transfer of the radiator. It can be shortened in order to increase the passage width to the optimal 80โ€“90 cm. It is also possible to remove a part of the fire cutoff to increase the light opening. In certain situations, it makes sense to move the passage, for example, if the length of the window sill is too long or if the entrance to the loggia is greatly offset relative to the doorway of the room.

Attaching the loggia to the room with your own hands

Underestimation of the thickness of the โ€œwarmโ€ wall can also be performed relatively freely in certain types of buildings. This is about:

  • prefabricated monolithic structures with filling the cells of the concrete frame with masonry;
  • self-supporting brick facade walls;
  • external walls with a single front insulation.

Attaching the loggia to the room with your own hands

The presence of front brickwork or insulation on the wall between the apartment and the loggia does not provide any benefit, but their removal allows you to gain up to 15โ€“20 cm in width. The same is with filling the wall: it does not perform any load-bearing functions, therefore it can be partially dismantled. The final wall thickness should not be less than 25, and better โ€“ 30 cm. With this width, it becomes possible to neatly finish the inner edges of the opening and install electrical fittings on the slopes. Also, if you want to restore the internal glazing, it will fit into the opening correctly with the formation of slopes of sufficient width.

Insulation and heating of the loggia

The presence of even a small cold bridge and even more a through fistula reduces the time for complete cooling of the loggia to several tens of minutes. It is impossible to place a full-fledged thermal protection belt due to concern about preserving the internal space, while the internal decoration has almost zero inertia and does not store heat well.

Attaching the loggia to the room with your own hands

The first step to high-quality insulation is the complete elimination of airflow. For this, polyurethane foam is filled in all seams and cavities between walls, plates and parapet. It is also imperative to wipe the seams of the parapet masonry, at least from the inside. After that, the main heat protection belt is arranged: first, the frame floor is insulated, where 150-200 mm of mineral wool is laid in the space between the logs. Next, the walls and ceiling are glued with synthetic insulation -XPS or PUR up to 25 mm, on top of which a roll of expanded polyethylene with a reflective layer is attached. The thermal protection circuit must necessarily be solid, all gaps at the joints are sealed with polyurethane foam. Only the wall between the apartment and the loggia does not need insulation: this is not only a useless waste of the width of the loggia, but also a conscious deterioration in the transfer of heat to the cold room from the apartment.

Attaching the loggia to the room with your own hands

Heating the loggia should ensure that the floor is heated to a comfortable temperature. If the clean ceiling height exceeds 2.5 m, installation of radiant heating would be a good option. In other cases, it is optimal to place a heating film with a specific power of 60-80 W / m under a light floor covering2. It is not always advantageous to use convectors for heating: on the one hand, they negatively affect the plastic finish, on the other hand, the floor of the loggia with such heating will always be 7โ€“8 ยฐ C colder than the air.

Wall and ceiling decoration

Usually, lightweight cladding is used for finishing loggias. This significantly increases the practicality of use and the convenience of cleaning, besides, due to the additional air gap, heat protection is improved. As a material for finishing, plastic or MDF lining, a sandwich for interior work or thermo-efficient panels are suitable. The material should make it possible to make turns and abutments as easy as possible without using special fittings. Wet finishing methods and drywall on the loggia are not used, such materials do not work well in conditions of extreme changes in temperature and humidity.

Attaching the loggia to the room with your own hands

As for the ceiling, it can be absolutely anything. On loggias of simple configurations, it is easiest to stretch a film or fabric; a hanging armstrong with a moisture-resistant filling also recommends itself well. But usually, due to the lack of height of the room, preference is given to plastic lining. What is really important when finishing a loggia is to correctly complete all the connections between different finishing materials. The slopes of the opening in the โ€œwarmโ€ wall are usually designed with the installation of framing profiles or platbands. To do this, the opening must have an indent from other structures of at least 100 mm, which means that it is definitely not worthwhile to underestimate the ceiling too much or expand the window part close to the wall..

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Comments: 1
  1. William Parker

    Could you please provide some guidance or instructions on how to attach a loggia to a room by oneself? I am interested in undertaking this project independently, but I would appreciate any advice, tips, or steps to follow to ensure a successful outcome. Thank you in advance for your assistance!

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