Rooflight and skylight installation in Hadleigh

Suffolk authority

Applications here go to the Suffolk authority rather than the Essex one. Same product, same process, different department, and it is established at the outset.

Wool town roofs

Steep clay pantile and plain tile roofs over timber frames, often with substantial roof voids that were once storage. Those voids are frequently the reason for the enquiry: they are convertible, and they have no daylight at all.

On a listed building that is a consent question before it is a product question. Where consent is granted, flush conservation rooflights are what gets agreed, and on a steep pantile roof they need careful soakering to sit properly.

Frames that have moved

Several hundred year old roofs are not square, and members are not where a modern drawing expects. We open up and look before committing to a position, because cutting something that turns out to be carrying load is not a recoverable mistake.

Skylight and rooflight work we cover in Hadleigh

Roof lanterns, flat roof rooflights, roof windows, VELUX replacements, conservation units and sun tunnels, all surveyed before they are quoted. We also work in Sudbury, Stoke-by-Nayland and East Bergholt.

A Suffolk wool town with a medieval street

Hadleigh has one of the finest medieval and Georgian high streets in Suffolk, with the Guildhall, the Deanery Tower and the church at its heart and an exceptional concentration of listed buildings along the street and the lanes off it. The conservation area is extensive.

Behind and around that sits Victorian expansion and a substantial amount of twentieth century housing, which is ordinary work by comparison.

Making an application that works

Conservation officers in a town with this much listed fabric see a great many vague applications, and most of the delay people experience is caused by missing material rather than by a proposal that was wrong.

Name the product. Manufacturer, model and size, not a description of a rooflight in general terms.

Include the section drawing. The manufacturer’s detail showing exactly how far the unit stands above the plane of the covering. This answers the question the officer actually cares about, and its absence is the single most common reason an application sits unresolved.

Show it on an elevation. Not only on a plan. Describe honestly what is visible from where. A rear slope screened by the ridge from every public vantage point is a much easier case than the same unit on the street frontage, and saying so plainly helps rather than hurts.

Address the historic fabric. On a timber framed building, say where the unit sits relative to the historic rafters and purlins and confirm that none is being cut. That is frequently the officer’s real concern and answering it unprompted saves a round of correspondence.

Frame a replacement correctly. Where an existing modern rooflight or plastic dome is being swapped for a conservation unit, say so explicitly. That is a heritage improvement.

We prepare this material as part of the job: the survey, the product drawing and a clear written description. It is not a planning consultancy and we do not charge as one, but it covers most domestic applications here.

Blinds and living with the result

Worth settling before the unit is ordered rather than afterwards.

Steel conservation rooflights, the sort required on listed and Article 4 properties along the street, do not carry the clip in accessory ranges mass market roof windows do, so blinds become a separate made to measure item fitted to the reveal. Budget for it early.

Most conservation units are top hung or side hung on a stay rather than centre pivot, which gives a clear opening and an unobstructed view and means the outer face cannot be rotated inward for cleaning. On anything above easy reach, decide how the glass gets cleaned before it goes in.

In a room with historic joinery or exposed frame, the reveal detail matters as much as the window itself. A splayed plaster reveal reads correctly where a square boxed one does not, and it lets considerably more light into the room as a bonus.

What to send us

A photograph of the roof, one of the frontage showing the street, and the address so we can check the listing, the conservation position and the authority ourselves.

Tell us whether there is side access to the rear, because along the historic street that single fact changes the shape of the quotation more than the choice of unit does.

If you know the building is timber framed, say so, and if you can safely photograph the roof structure from inside, that is genuinely useful. Where historic rafters and purlins constrain the position, the survey establishes what is possible before anyone discusses what the unit should be.

Where the honest answer is that a particular slope will not be consented, we would rather tell you before a survey than after one.

How we work

A survey before a fixed price. An itemised written quotation naming the product, the flashing kit and the insulation collar. Disposal of what comes out. A ten year guarantee on our workmanship alongside the manufacturer’s warranty on the product.

Where consent is needed we prepare the survey, the product drawing and a written description that engages honestly with visibility and with the historic fabric. That covers most domestic applications here without a planning consultant.

Where a standard unit would be consented we will say so rather than defaulting to the more expensive conservation product.