Chafford Hundred skylights and rooflights
Chafford Hundred was planned from the start as one large estate beside the M25. The dining room, the hallway and the landing are the places where a rooflight changes the most.
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Which rooms in a Chafford Hundred house stay dim?
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1 A dining room off the hall Where the dining room sits between the lounge and the kitchen, it can be left with a single window, or none once the room beside it has been extended. Light from the roof reaches it without moving a wall. -
2 A hallway with no window The hall is often the part of a plan furthest from every outside wall. Daylight from the roof, through a tunnel or a glazed opening, brightens the front door area and the foot of the stairs. -
3 The landing between bedrooms A landing is a corridor with doors, and daylight only arrives when a bedroom door stands open. A rooflight over it lights the whole upper floor at once.
A planned estate on old quarry ground
How the estate came about says something about how its houses are laid out.
Chafford Hundred is a housing development and suburb in the town of Grays, in the borough of Thurrock in Essex. In 1985 Thurrock Council and Essex County Council approved a proposal to build a large landscape-housing estate on derelict land beside the M25, and the scheme was designed by the architect Owen Luder. The plan took in 5,000 homes, five schools and new shops for a population of 15,000. The name comes from a former Bishop of London and from the historic Hundred of Chafford.
The ground had a working past. Edmund Wright Brooks took over local works in 1870 and turned them into quarries for his cement manufacturing company, and other cement companies were quarrying the area by 1874. For much of the 20th century it was mainly chalk, gravel and brickearth pits, and the last of them closed in 1976. The early 1990s housing slump hit the new estate hard, and at one stage the project included plans for a church, a shopping centre, a doctor's surgery, a library and a station on the Fenchurch Street line.
Myth
On a planned estate the layout is fixed, so changing the light from the roof is not on the cards.
Fact
The roof of a house is yours to alter within the permitted development limits, unless a condition on the original permission has removed them. A flat or maisonette has no such rights. We check the house at the survey.
What a planned estate does to the plan of a house
Houses on a large planned development tend to be built from a small number of layouts repeated many times. Rooms are arranged around a central hall and staircase, rather than along a street frontage, and the living space is often open from front to back at ground level. That makes the middle of the plan the weak point. The outer rooms have windows. The core, where the hall, the stairs and often a dining room meet, borrows from them.
The dining room in the middle
Where a dining room sits between the lounge and the kitchen, it can have one window at best, and sometimes none. Owners often open it up to its neighbours with a wide doorway or a missing wall, which helps the sightlines and does nothing for the light. A table in the middle of that space is a good thing to have, and a bad thing to light from the side.
Where the dining room is below a bedroom, there is no roof straight above it, so a rooflight is not an option for that room directly. The answer is to light the space next to it, such as an extension, in a position that throws daylight across the opening. Where there is a single-storey extension with a flat roof, a flat rooflight or a lantern over its inner edge is the usual way to reach back into the old dining space. A roof lantern suits a wider extension, and a flat unit suits a narrow one.
Sizing the glass to the table
We start from the furniture. A dining table seats six or eight people and takes up a patch of floor about the size of a double bed, plus the chairs pulled back around it. The light needs to fall on that patch of floor. So the unit is centred on where the table stands, which is not always the middle of the extension roof, and the opening is cut a little wider than the table so the light does not stop dead at its edge. The opening is marked out first, so the position can be agreed before the roof is cut.
Glass type is the other decision. A room that gets low afternoon sun through its back doors needs a different glazing specification from one that faces the road. We discuss it at the survey once we have seen which way the house points and what the rear garden looks like.
Rooms in the roof on a newer house are often lit by one window at the gable. Add a roof window on the slope and the far end of that room gets daylight as well, so a desk or a bed can sit away from the wall without the corner going dim. The size we suggest depends on the rafter spacing we find.
The hall, the landing and who signs it off
The hallway is easy to overlook. It holds the front door and the foot of the stairs. It usually has no daylight source of its own. Because it sits in the core of the plan, with the lounge and the kitchen on either side and the stairs rising over it, there is often little outside wall to cut a window into. Light has to arrive from above.
Above a hall is a staircase and, above that, a landing and then a loft. A roof window over the stairwell in the loft slope is the neatest answer: it lights the landing directly, and the light falls down the stairs to the hall. Pale walls along the stair carry that light further down. Where the stairs and the roof slope do not line up, a sun tunnel carries daylight to a hall ceiling from a dome on the roof, with a flexible tube where it has to bend round the roof timbers.
Myth
A hallway is too small and too far from the roof for daylight to reach.
Fact
Daylight can come down from the loft slope above the stairs, in a lined well or a flexible tube that bends past timbers where it has to. What we can use depends on what is in the loft, and we look when we are up there.
The landing
Upstairs the question is slightly different. A landing is a corridor with several doors. In winter the bedroom doors are closed, and it is a dim box at any hour. Putting a rooflight above it brightens the landing and the top of the stairs. A pale ceiling and pale walls on the landing carry the daylight further along it.
If the loft over the landing has been boarded or converted, the route for the light well changes. Boarding and insulation have to be worked around, and a loft room can change what the Building Regulations ask for. A roof window in a loft conversion on a two-storey house is not accepted as the escape route, so we keep any such work separate from the question of daylight on the stairs.
The hall as you come in
At ground level, the front door is where daylight is missed. Visitors step in from outdoors into a dim lobby, and the coats, the shoes and the post all end up in shadow. When the stairs rise straight from the hall, a rooflight above the stairwell lights the first thing a visitor sees. When the stairs turn, the daylight lands on the half-landing and spills down in two stages, which is gentler on the eye and still useful.
Thurrock, planning and Building Control
Planning for Chafford Hundred goes to Thurrock Council. On a house, one condition for a roof window is that the unit must not stand more than 150 mm proud of the plane of the original roof slope, frame included. Our planning guide gives the whole list of conditions, and we apply them to your house at the survey.
Cutting through a roof counts as building work, so Building Regulations apply. A new or replacement roof window is held to 1.4 W/m²K (or Window Energy Rating band B) and a rooflight or lantern to 2.2 W/m²K, and a loft room brings fire and escape questions as well. We handle the Building Control notification where the work is notifiable, and the council or a registered building control approver signs it off.
From the M25 side to your landing
Chafford Hundred sits some 28 miles north-west up the road from Maidstone.
A landing rooflight, from visit to finish
- Up into the loft We find where the light well can run from the slope to the landing ceiling.
- Written price Unit, roof work and lining are priced together after the survey.
- Cover and cut Floors and stairs are protected, the slope is opened and the frame is made watertight.
- Line and leave The well is boarded and plastered back to a paint-ready finish, with the paperwork handed over.
On the day
On an estate where homes sit close together, the first job is the route in. We agree where the van goes, how materials come to the house and how the hall and stairs are covered before a tool is lifted. Inside a loft, we plan around the stored boxes and the lagging. Boards over the joists are lifted where the opening is to go.
The roof opening is formed and made watertight, the unit is fixed, and the reveals are lined and left ready for paint. Plasterwork inside a light well takes time to dry before it can be decorated, so we tell you when to expect the finish to be paint-ready. You receive the paperwork for the job and our 10-year workmanship guarantee in writing.
To arrange a survey, send a WhatsApp message to 07880 284133 or email info@orchardskylightsmaidstone.co.uk, or leave your details in the quote section.
Close neighbours on the map are Grays, South Ockendon and Aveley, and we survey in all of them too. A neighbour's house on the same estate is a fair guide to the layout, and your own roof still gets its own inspection.
Dining rooms, halls and landings
Our dining room sits in the middle of the ground floor with no outside wall. Where would the light come from?
From the nearest roof that can be reached. If there is an extension next to the dining room, a rooflight over the joining edge sends daylight across. If not, we may light the hall or stairwell instead, so the dining room borrows from it.
What does a rooflight over a landing involve inside the house?
A light well is formed through the loft from the roof opening down to the landing ceiling, and lined so that it reads as part of the ceiling. We cover the stairs and floors first. We agree with you beforehand how much of the loft needs to be cleared, and which stored items can stay put under dust sheets.
Which council deals with planning for our roof?
Thurrock Council. A roof window on a house is normally permitted development if it meets the conditions in our planning permission guide; flats and maisonettes sit outside those rights.
What do you need from me to book a Chafford Hundred survey?
Your postcode and the room that bothers you, sent by WhatsApp or email. We arrange the visit from there, the survey costs nothing, and a fixed written quote follows it.
Nearby towns to Chafford Hundred
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Tell us about the room that stays dark. We come out, look at the room and the roof, then send a fixed written quote.
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