About Castle Skylights
A skylight and rooflight installer working Colchester and thirty miles around it. Residential only, and deliberately so.
Castle Skylights is a skylight and rooflight installer working Colchester and about thirty miles around it. Residential work only. Ten year workmanship guarantee. No showroom and no public premises, because we are on roofs rather than behind a desk.
Why only rooflights
Most firms that fit rooflights are general roofers or window companies doing it alongside everything else. The detailing that makes a rooflight last is the part that gets lost when it is one job among many: the kerb height, the vapour control layer sealed to the frame, the right flashing kit for the covering, the fall that stops water sitting against the upstand.
None of that is difficult. All of it is easy to skip when you are also doing the flat roof, the fascias and the gutters.
Three towns in one postcode
Colchester is not one roof market. The historic core is a conservation question. The suburbs are a flat roof extension question. The coast is a salt exposure question. An installer who only knows one of the three will give you a confident answer that happens to be wrong for your house.
That is the whole reason the survey happens before the quotation rather than after it.
What we will not claim
We do not name a trade body, an ombudsman, an accreditation or an insurance backed guarantee scheme, because we do not currently belong to one. We do not publish a review score, because we would rather show none than invent one.
What we will stand behind is on the guarantee page, including its limits.
Who we are
Castle Skylights is a Colchester based rooflight and skylight installer working across north and central Essex. We fit roof windows into pitched roofs, rooflights and lanterns into flat roofs, sun tunnels into rooms with no other route for daylight, and we replace a great many failed units that somebody else fitted a long time ago.
That is the whole business. We do not do general roofing, we do not do extensions, and we do not do windows in walls. Specialising narrowly is why we know what an obsolete size code from 1994 is and what to do about it.
How we work
We survey before we price. A fixed price from a photograph is a guess with a margin built in to cover the guessing. We will give an indicative range by email so you know whether to continue, then a fixed written price after somebody has seen the roof. On a flat roof we will not price at all without seeing the kerb, because that is where the cost is.
We itemise. A quotation names the manufacturer, the model, the size code, the glass specification and the flashing kit. Where two quotations differ by a factor of two, it is almost always because one of them is not saying what it includes, and an itemised quotation is the only way for you to compare properly.
We say when the cheaper option is right. A non fragile rooflight instead of walk on glazing. A replacement sealed unit instead of a whole window. A sun tunnel instead of a rooflight. A rear slope instead of a front one so no application is needed. All of those cost us money and all of them are in the guides on this site, because the alternative is selling people things they do not need and living with the reviews.
We finish the job. The internal lining goes back, the making good is done, the old unit is taken away, and the guarantee paperwork is left with you on the day rather than posted later.
What we are careful about
The weathering sequence, more than anything else. Nearly every rooflight that leaks leaks because the underlay collar was not lapped correctly, or the flashing kit was the wrong profile for the covering, or the covering was reinstated before the flashing rather than over it. None of those are visible once the job is finished, which is exactly why they get skipped.
The insulation collar is the other one. It is a separate order line, it is frequently left off cheap quotations, and its absence shows up as condensation on the reveal several months later when nobody connects the two things.
We also do not leave an opening uncovered overnight, and we do not start a strip out if the forecast will not let us close it the same day. In this part of the country that occasionally costs us a day, and it has never cost a customer a ceiling.
Guarantees and paperwork
Ten years on our workmanship, alongside whatever the manufacturer gives on the product. Those are two different things and the distinction matters, because most rooflight problems are installation problems rather than product failures. Where a unit does fail under a manufacturer’s warranty, we handle that claim rather than leaving you to argue about a product we chose and fitted.
Where work is notifiable under Building Regulations we deal with Building Control. Where planning permission or listed building consent is needed, we prepare the drawings and the description for the application.
Getting in touch
A photograph of the roof, or of the data plate on an existing window, gets you a useful answer faster than anything else. Call, message on WhatsApp, or use the form. There is no charge for a question.
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Ready to bring the daylight in?
Tell us about your project and we’ll send a clear, fixed written quote, no pressure, no surprises.
- Fixed written price before any work starts
- No pressure, no obligation, no sales calls
- Flexible survey times that suit you
- A reply within one working day