Rooflight and skylight installation in Mile End

Cut roofs against trussed roofs

This is the distinction that decides the price, and it is easy to check yourself.

Put your head into the loft. If you see rafters running from eaves to ridge with a horizontal purlin partway up and clear space between them, you have a traditional cut roof. Forming or widening an opening is normal carpentry and a wide rooflight is straightforward.

If instead you see a repeating pattern of triangular frames with diagonal members running through the middle of the space, joined by flat steel plates, you have trussed rafters. Those are engineered components and cutting a member changes how the roof carries load.

With trusses, a unit narrow enough to fit between two of them at 600mm centres needs no structural work. Anything wider needs a designed trimmer and an engineer, and that is the step in cost. Older Mile End properties are generally cut roofs; anything from the 1970s onward is likely trussed.

Loft conversions

The older housing here converts well. Decent pitches, purlin roofs with usable space between the rafters, and plan depths that give a worthwhile room once the head height is checked.

The measurement that matters is from the top of the existing ceiling joists to the underside of the ridge. Once a floor, insulation and plasterboard are added, a great deal of that disappears, and the rule of thumb is that you want comfortably over 2.4 metres of existing clear height to end up with a usable room. Measure it before anything else.

Roof windows in a conversion do two jobs at once, and it is worth separating them. They provide daylight, which is a comfort question. They also frequently provide the means of escape required by Building Regulations, which is not optional and which dictates a minimum openable area and a maximum sill height above the floor. A window chosen purely for the view can fail that requirement, so it is settled at design stage rather than at order stage.

What we fit most in Mile End

Roof windows into rear slopes for loft rooms and landings, which is the bread and butter. Flat roof rooflights and lanterns over rear extensions on the larger plots. Sun tunnels into internal bathrooms and hallways in the terraced housing, where there is no external wall and no available slope for a full skylight.

Sun tunnels are underused generally and they suit this housing stock well. A mirrored rigid tube brings genuine daylight down into a windowless internal room for a fraction of the cost of anything else, and the roof component is small enough to be almost invisible from the ground.

The distinction that matters when specifying one is rigid against flexible. A rigid mirrored tube reflects 98 percent or better at each bounce; a flexible foil concertina reflects perhaps 80 percent and scatters light at every fold. Over a run from a Mile End roof down to a ground floor ceiling, that difference is most of the light. We fit rigid wherever the route allows it.

Coverings

Mixed, and each needs its own flashing kit. Slate on the older properties, plain clay tile on some, concrete interlocking tiles across the interwar and post war stock, and modern profiled tiles on the newer development.

The kit is not interchangeable. A flat kit intended for slate, fitted to a profiled tile, leaves voids under the tile profile that let water past within a season, and it is the most common installation fault we find on other people’s work. When comparing quotations, ask which kit is specified for your covering by name.

Permissions

Most of Mile End sits outside any conservation designation, so permitted development normally applies: a rooflight is permitted provided it does not project more than 150mm beyond the roof plane and does not sit above the highest part of the roof. There are additional restrictions on side elevations facing a boundary.

There are listed buildings in the older core, and a listing removes permitted development entirely. Listed building consent is required for a rooflight regardless of which slope it is on or whether it can be seen. Where a property is listed, that is the first thing to establish, not the last.

Access

Generally good on the newer roads, with driveways and space to work. Tighter in the older terraced sections, where there may be no off street parking and no side access to the rear, and where scaffold at the front needs a highway licence.

What to send us

A photograph of the roof, a photograph looking up inside the loft, and the data plate if you are replacing an existing unit. Those three cover almost every question we would otherwise need a visit to answer.

Manual, electric or solar

A rooflight above easy reach that is difficult to open does not get opened, and a room that is never ventilated has condensation.

Manual with a pole is cheapest and fine up to about two and a half metres. Above that it becomes a chore and the window stays shut.

Mains electric gives a wall switch and a rain sensor. The unit premium is modest; the wiring is where the cost sits. At first fix during a conversion a cable to the rooflight position is twenty minutes. Into a finished room it means lifting flooring, chasing a wall and redecorating.

The single most common regret in this trade is fitting manual during a conversion to save the premium, then wanting a motor two years later. Run a capped cable to the position at first fix even if you fit manual. It costs almost nothing and it turns a disruptive job into a cheap one. Photograph where it is before the plasterboard goes on.

Solar carries its own panel and battery and needs no connection at all, which makes it the usual answer for retrofit into a finished loft. It works better here than people expect: the panel needs daylight rather than direct sun, and it works on a north slope through an East Anglian winter. It opens more slowly, thirty to sixty seconds against fifteen to thirty, which nobody notices.

The newer estates

The modern development toward the hospital is trussed rafter construction with concrete or profiled tiles and shallower pitches, and the work there is different again: mostly flat roof skylights over rear extensions rather than anything in the main roof, because a trussed loft is not convertible without replacing the structure.

On those extensions the kerb is what we check first. A 150mm upstand with the deck falling away from it, insulated on the outer face, is what makes a flat roof rooflight last. Without it the unit sits in standing water and the seal is under attack every time it rains.

Aftercare

Ten years on our workmanship, alongside the manufacturer’s warranty on the product, and those are two different things. Most rooflight problems are installation problems, which is why the second one matters.

Where a unit fails under a manufacturer’s warranty on a job we did, we handle that claim. You should not have to argue with a manufacturer about a product we chose and fitted.

The routine care is short. Clean the gasket once a year so the sash seats properly, clean the filter at the top of the sash, and cycle any motorised unit fully a few times a year including in winter, because mechanisms that sit unused seize.