Rooflight and skylight installation in Bocking

What a weaver’s cottage does differently

Cloth working needed light, and it needed it upstairs where the loom was. The result is a building type with unusually generous upper floor glazing, long windows, and a top storey that was a workspace rather than a bedroom.

Two consequences for us. The upper floors frequently have better head height and more usable volume than a cottage of that age would normally offer, which makes them good candidates for daylight work. And the historic glazing pattern is often part of what makes the building significant, so a rooflight is assessed against a facade that already has a strong rhythm.

Where a property is listed, adding a rooflight to a slope above historically significant fenestration is a design question rather than a formality, and it is worth putting to the conservation officer with a drawing rather than a description.

Consent

Listed building consent is required for a rooflight on a listed building, always, on any slope, whether or not it can be seen. The listing covers the whole building inside and out, there is no small works threshold, and doing the work without consent is a criminal offence rather than a planning irregularity.

For an unlisted house in the conservation area, permitted development for rooflights survives unless an Article 4 direction removes it, which is a short enquiry to the council.

Where consent is needed, a conservation rooflight is what gets approved: low profile so it sits close to the plane of the covering, upright rather than wide in proportion, with a central glazing bar, in matt black. Include the manufacturer’s section drawing, because how far the unit stands above the covering is the question that decides it.

The roofs

Steep pitches, cut roofs with rafters and purlins, and coverings of clay plain tile and slate on the older property.

Old clay plain tile is demanding: small, double lapped, and brittle when old, with a proportion breaking on removal whatever care is taken. Matching weathered tile is difficult and the usual answer is to take sound tiles from a rear or hidden slope so the visible elevation stays consistent.

Slate is the easiest covering in this trade to work with, because the flashing arrangement is a straightforward soaker and apron and individual slates lift and replace without damaging their neighbours.

Expect no underlay on a roof that has never been stripped. The weathering is then built around the opening rather than lapped into a membrane, which is normal on a building of this age and belongs in the quotation.

Sun tunnels in the narrow plans

The terraced and cottage stock here frequently has an internal bathroom, WC or hallway with no external wall and no available 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 brings genuine daylight into a room that has never had any, for a fraction of the cost of anything else, and the roof component is small and low enough to be effectively invisible from the street, which matters in a conservation area.

Specify rigid rather than flexible, because a flexible foil tube scatters light at every fold and delivers roughly a third of what a rigid tube of the same diameter gives. Size by diameter, since output goes with area, so 350mm passes about twice the light of 250mm. And insulate the tube where it crosses the cold loft, or condensation forms inside it and arrives at the diffuser looking exactly like a leak.

The later housing

Ordinary work and much easier. Concrete interlocking tiles, pitches around 30 to 35 degrees, cut roofs on the earlier properties and trussed rafters on the later ones, off street parking and space to stand a tower.

Establish cut or trussed from a loft photograph, because it decides more about the price than the choice of unit does. Profiled tiles need a deep flashing kit rather than the flat kit used on slate.

Access

Tighter in the conservation area, with frontages close to the road, limited parking and side access that is not guaranteed. Scaffold on the highway needs a licence and time to arrange. Straightforward on the later roads.

Tell us at the enquiry stage whether there is side access to the rear. On an older Bocking property that single fact changes the shape of the quotation more than the choice of unit does.

What should be itemised

The unit with manufacturer, model, size code and glazing specification. The flashing kit and which profile. The insulation collar as a named line, or on a flat roof the kerb detail including whether the outer face is insulated. Access and who provides it, including any highway licence. Making good, to what standard, and whether decoration is included. Disposal. Building Control where notifiable. And a stated contingency for decayed timber.

A quotation giving one number against roof window supplied and fitted is not comparable with anything. Where ours is higher than another, the itemisation will usually show you why.

Where cheap quotations save money

Three places, none visible when the job is finished. A universal flashing kit rather than the correct profile for the covering. No insulation collar. And making good that stops at the plasterboard rather than including the plastering and decoration.

On a conservation area property there is a fourth: a standard unit fitted where a conservation one was required, which is cheaper up front and becomes an enforcement problem later.

Two guarantees

The manufacturer warrants the product. We guarantee the installation for ten years. They are separate cover from separate parties, and most rooflight problems are installation problems rather than product failures, which is why the second matters more.

A manufacturer’s warranty also generally excludes anything installed outside its own instructions, which means a badly fitted window can void the product warranty as well as leaking. Where a unit does fail under a manufacturer’s warranty on a job we did, we handle that claim ourselves.