Straight Answers

Questions Answered

Two hundred of the questions we are actually asked, answered without the sales pitch.

200 pages across 10 subjects

These are the questions we are actually asked, on the phone and at surveys, answered in the same words we would use standing in your kitchen.

Where the answer is “it depends”, the page says what it depends on. Where the answer is “no”, it says no.

How this library works

Questions Answered installed across the Colne Valley

Every question here came from somebody standing in a room, on a phone, or in a loft, asking us something real. We wrote the answers down because the same questions come round every week and because a straight answer is more use to you than a callback.

Each answer is a page rather than a paragraph. If the honest response is that it depends, the page says what it depends on and how to work out which case you are in, because that is genuinely more useful than a number that turns out not to apply to your roof.

What is in here

Cost questions. What things cost, why quotations differ so much for what looks like the same job, what is normally included and what is normally extra, and which variables actually move the number. We give ranges rather than single figures because a range you can trust beats a figure you cannot.

Permission questions. Whether you need planning permission, when permitted development covers you, what changes in a conservation area, and why listed buildings work differently from everything else. These are the questions where a wrong assumption is most expensive, and where the answer genuinely varies by address.

Product questions. Fixed against opening, manual against electric, double against triple, rigid against flexible, one large rooflight against several small ones. Trade offs rather than winners, with the situation each one suits.

Problem questions. Why a rooflight is misting, why there is water on the reveal, why a sash will not close, whether a noise is a fault, and which of those need somebody out and which do not. Condensation and leaks look identical to a homeowner and have completely different fixes, so a good part of this section is about telling them apart.

Process questions. How long jobs take, what happens on the day, what we need from you, what the weather does to a programme, and what the guarantee actually covers.

How to use it

The answers are grouped under the service they belong to, so if you know what you are having done, start from that service page and work through the questions attached to it. If you are earlier than that and still working out what you need, the guides are the better starting point: they cover a whole topic in depth where an answer covers one question.

Nothing here is a substitute for somebody looking at your roof. It is meant to get you to the point where the conversation with us is a short one, where you already know roughly what you want and roughly what it should cost, and where the survey confirms rather than reveals.

If your question is not here

Ask it. We add pages when a question comes up more than once, and the fastest way to get something added is to be the second person to ask. There is no charge for a question and no obligation attached to asking one.

For anything specific to your property, a survey is the honest answer, and we will say so rather than guessing from a description. Where a photograph is enough, we will tell you that too and save you the appointment.

Why the answers are longer than the questions

A one line answer to a rooflight question is usually a wrong answer with the conditions removed. What a replacement costs depends on whether the opening is reused, what the covering is and how the roof is reached. Whether you need permission depends on the listing, the designation and the elevation. Giving a single figure or a flat yes would be quicker to read and would mislead most of the people reading it.

So each answer states the conditions, tells you how to work out which one you are in, and gives a range rather than a number. The pages are a few minutes each and they are written to be read once and then acted on, not to be scrolled past on the way to a phone number.

Kept current

Building Regulations change, permitted development rules change, product ranges are discontinued and size codes go obsolete. Where something here is tied to a rule or a product, we revisit it when the rule or the product moves. Where an answer describes a judgement rather than a rule, it reflects how we actually work rather than an industry position.

Nothing here replaces a survey

These pages are written to get you to the point where the conversation with us is a short one: where you already know roughly what you want, roughly what it should cost, and what questions to ask whoever quotes.

What they cannot do is tell you what is under your covering, whether the timber around an existing opening is sound, or whether the rafter spacing at the position you want matches the rest of the slope. That is what a survey is for, and it is free.