Rooflight and skylight installation in Braintree

Properly inland

This is the one part of our area where salt is a non-issue. Standard architectural powder coat is entirely adequate here, and specifying marine grade would be spending money for nothing.

That matters because it is the clearest example of why the survey decides the specification rather than the catalogue: the same unit costs less here than on Mersea, correctly.

The historic centre

Conservation coverage over the old core, timber framed and Georgian buildings, some listed. Flush conservation rooflights on visible slopes, consent first on listed stock.

The modern edge

Large areas of estate housing from the 1970s onwards. Trussed roofs almost throughout, profiled concrete tiles, and the two rules that always follow: deep profile flashing kits for roof windows, and no cutting trusses without a structural design.

Rear extensions are common on the older suburban stock and take the usual flat roof rooflight decisions.

Skylight and rooflight work we cover in Braintree

Roof lanterns, flat roof rooflights, roof windows, VELUX replacements, conservation units and sun tunnels, all surveyed before they are quoted. We also work in Bocking, Great Notley and Halstead.

A market town with a very mixed roofscape

Braintree covers a wide range of building periods in a small area. There is a historic centre with listed buildings and conservation designation, substantial Victorian and Edwardian expansion from the textile years, interwar and post war housing, and a large amount of modern development around the edges.

Because we cover Braintree from Colchester, we are usually asked two things first: whether we actually come out here, and whether the price is different. Yes, and no. Distance affects how we plan a day rather than what appears on the quotation.

Condensation, and telling it apart from a leak

A good share of the callouts we take in Braintree turn out not to be leaks at all. The older housing here has been insulated, draught proofed and double glazed over the decades without gaining any ventilation strategy, so it holds moisture, and moisture condenses on the coldest surface in the room.

In a room with a rooflight that is very often the glass or the plaster around it. Water forms, it runs, and it looks exactly like a leak from below.

Condensation appears on cold mornings, is worst in deep winter, forms evenly across the inner face of the glass, and bears no relation to whether it rained. It clears as the day warms.

A leak follows rain, and usually rain driven from one particular direction. It arrives at one point rather than spread evenly, and it leaves a mark that is still there when everything has dried.

Misting inside the sealed unit is neither. If the moisture is between the panes and cannot be wiped off either face, the perimeter seal has failed. That is a unit at the end of its life, which happens at fifteen to twenty five years, rather than an installation problem.

There is one case where internal water genuinely is a fault. If it forms on the plastered reveal rather than on the glass, the usual cause is a missing insulation collar, the component that closes the gap between frame and structure. Without it the reveal is cold enough to condense. It is a separate order line, it is the first thing dropped from a cheap quotation, and the symptom does not appear until months later when nobody connects the two.

Sun tunnels in the terraced stock

The Victorian terraces here have narrow plans, and a good number have an internal bathroom, WC or hallway with no external wall and no available roof slope. There is no rooflight answer for a room like that, but there is a tunnel answer wherever there is a loft above.

A rigid mirrored tube runs from a small dome in the roof down to a diffuser in the ceiling and brings genuine daylight into a room that has never had any. It is the cheapest daylight in this trade by a wide margin, and the roof component is small and low enough to be effectively invisible from the street, which matters where a conservation area applies.

Three things decide whether it works properly.

Rigid rather than 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, and over a run from a terrace roof down to a ground floor ceiling that difference is most of the light.

Diameter. Output goes with area rather than width, so a 350mm tube passes roughly twice the light of a 250mm one. 250mm suits an internal WC, 350mm a landing or a decent bathroom, 530mm a room you actually live in.

Insulation and sealing. The tube is insulated where it crosses the cold loft and the ceiling ring is sealed airtight, or warm moist room air gets into the tube, condenses on the cold metal, and arrives at the diffuser looking exactly like a leak.

It is not a rooflight and we will not pretend otherwise: no view, no ventilation, no sense of sky, and nothing after dusk. Most units take an optional light fitting inside the diffuser so the same ceiling opening does both jobs. What it gives you, on a dull afternoon in a windowless bathroom, is enough daylight not to reach for the switch.

Timescales and lead times

A like for like replacement into a sound opening is a single day. A new opening in a tiled roof with making good runs to three or four days depending on the plastering. A lantern on an existing extension, including structural work, is usually a week.

What lengthens a programme is the order rather than the work. Stock size roof windows are quick; made to measure units and lanterns run to several weeks. Where a structural engineer is involved, their drawing comes before the order rather than alongside it. Where listed building consent is needed in the historic centre, that is measured in months and it comes first.

The sensible sequence is survey, permission where needed, structural check where needed, order, then book the fitting to the delivery date. Booking the fitting first and hoping the unit arrives is how jobs slip.

We plan Braintree work as full days rather than short visits, which suits larger jobs and multiple units better than a single small item.