Rooflight and skylight installation in Lexden

The Victorian and Edwardian villas

Steep pitches, usually between 40 and 50 degrees, which is good news. A steep slope sheds water well, gives a generous headroom gain from any roof window fitted into it, and takes a flashing kit without the standing water problems a shallow roof creates.

The covering is commonly Welsh slate, sometimes original, sometimes a later reslate in a substitute. Slate is the easiest covering to work with for a skylight installation because the flashing kit for it is a straightforward soaker and apron arrangement, and slates can be lifted and replaced individually without breaking their neighbours if the work is done carefully.

What we find under it is more variable. A roof that has never been stripped may have no underlay at all, just slates on battens with the rafters visible from inside. That is not a fault and it does not stop a rooflight going in, but it changes the detailing: with no underlay to lap into, the weathering has to be built around the opening rather than tied into an existing membrane, and any quotation that has not accounted for it will change on the day.

Rafter sizes in houses of this age are frequently generous but irregular, and the spacings are whatever the carpenter felt was right in 1898. That matters when you want a wide rooflight, because the opening has to fall between rafters or be trimmed, and trimming means a structural check.

The conservation area

A significant part of Lexden sits within a conservation area, and there are listed buildings scattered through it. Two separate things follow, and they are commonly confused.

Being in a conservation area does not by itself remove permitted development rights for rooflights on a house. It does mean an Article 4 direction may be in place, and where one is, the permitted development route is gone and an application is required. Whether one applies to your address is a matter of checking rather than assuming, and Colchester City Council will tell you.

Being listed is different and absolute. Listed building consent is required for a new rooflight or skylight, front or rear, visible from the street or not. There is no small works exception and no rear elevation exception. The listing covers the whole building.

Where an application is needed on a Lexden property, a conservation rooflight is usually the design that gets through: low profile so it sits close to the plane of the slate, upright in proportion rather than wide, with a central glazing bar and a matt black finish. On a rear slope screened by the ridge from Lexden Road, a case for a standard unit can sometimes be made, and it is worth asking before assuming the more expensive product is compulsory.

What we fit here most

Loft conversions in the big villas, which usually means two or three roof windows in a rear slope and occasionally a conservation unit at the front. The roofs take them easily and the headroom in these lofts is better than almost anywhere else in Colchester.

Replacement of roof windows fitted in the 1980s and 1990s, which is now a large part of our work in this part of town. A great many Lexden lofts were converted in that period, and units of that age are reaching the end of their sealed unit life. The size codes are frequently obsolete, which is solvable and needs establishing early.

Flat roof rooflights and lanterns over rear extensions. Lexden plots are deep and a lot of them have gained a kitchen extension across the back, which is the classic case for a lantern or a run of flat roof skylights.

Access

Better than most of Colchester. The plots are generous, there is usually off street parking and space to stand a tower, and the frontages are set back from the road. Where scaffold is needed for a two storey rear slope it can normally be erected without a licence because it stands on private land.

The exception is the mature trees, which are a genuine planning consideration in Lexden as well as a practical one. Many are protected, and a scaffold or crane position sometimes needs to work around a canopy rather than through it. It is worth mentioning at survey rather than discovering on the day.

What it costs around here

The unit and the fitting cost the same in Lexden as anywhere else. What moves the price on these properties is the conservation dimension, where a specialist unit and an application add real cost, and the height, because a two storey Victorian villa with a 45 degree pitch is a scaffold job rather than a tower job.

Against that, the openings are easy, the covering is cooperative and the structure is usually sound, which pulls in the other direction. A straightforward rear slope roof window on a Lexden house is not an expensive job.

Getting a price

Send a photograph of the roof from the garden and, if you are replacing an existing unit, one of the data plate. Tell us whether the property is listed, and we will check the conservation designation ourselves. From that we can usually tell you what is possible and roughly what it costs before anybody visits.

Blinds and heritage interiors

Worth settling before the unit is ordered rather than after. Mass market roof windows have a full accessory range of blinds that clip to the frame, which is convenient and cheap. Steel conservation rooflights, the sort most often required on the listed and Article 4 properties here, generally do not, so blinds become a made to measure item fitted to the reveal.

In a room with original cornice, shutters or panelling, the reveal detail matters as much as the window. A splayed plaster reveal reads correctly in a period room where a square boxed one does not, and it lets considerably more light into the room as a bonus.

Replacing 1990s units

A large share of our Lexden work. The loft conversion boom of that period put a lot of roof windows into these houses and they are now at the end of their sealed unit life.

Photograph the data plate before doing anything else. It is on the top edge of the sash or on the frame beside the hinge, and on a centre pivot window rotating the sash brings it into view. From that photograph we can tell you what it is, whether the size is still made, and what the options are if it is not, without a visit.

Obsolete sizes are normal for units of this age and there are three routes. Adapt the opening to the nearest current size, which is usually within 40mm or 60mm and leaves you a standard size for the next thirty years. Find another manufacturer at the old dimension, which suits an opening that is awkward to alter. Or reframe entirely, which makes sense where the timber needs replacing anyway.

If two of three windows on a slope have misted, ask what the third costs while the scaffold is up. They went in together and they will fail together, and access is the largest shared cost.

Timescales

A like for like replacement into a sound opening is a day. Two or three in one visit is two to three days. A new opening in a slate roof with making good runs to three or four days depending on the plastering.

What lengthens a Lexden programme is rarely the fitting. It is the lead time on a conservation unit or a made to measure size, which can run to several weeks, and the wait for listed building consent or a planning determination, which is measured in months rather than weeks. Start those first and order the unit second.