Rooflights and skylights for Teynham homes

Old buildings, small windows

St Mary's church, on Teynham Street towards Conyer, is Grade I listed. The village also has older buildings such as Hinkley's Mill, Thatched Cottage, The Old Vicarage, Teynham Court and Crown House, along with Banks' farmhouse and cottage. Your own house may be nothing like these. If it is listed, though, the route is different, and the page on what a listed house allows explains how consent works there.

Houses of farmhouse and cottage age are often built with thick walls and deep reveals, and their windows were sized for a time when glass was dear. Inside, the effect is a room whose window lets in a narrow shaft of light that fades after a couple of metres. A dining room in the middle of such a house can rely on a single opening for everything, and the far corner is the first part to lose out. Morning light from an east window may reach the sideboard, but the chairs on the opposite side stay in shade until the lamps go on.

Whether glass in the roof can help depends on what is above the room. Where the dining room has a bedroom over it, daylight cannot come straight down. Where it sits in a single-storey part, or directly under the rafters, glass in the roof can put light onto the middle of the floor, either as a roof window in the slope or a flat rooflight over a deck. Loft rooms in older houses have their own habits: sloping ceilings, low eaves and a window at each gable end, so the centre of the room is the part that stays shadowed.

If a farmhouse has a lime plaster or lath ceiling, the opening is cut with the room sheeted off and the plaster is made good to a clean edge, since old plaster crumbles where modern board cuts cleanly.

Matching the unit to the roof

Clay tiles, slate and older plain tiles each need a different flashing, and the rafters in an old roof are not always where a modern frame expects them. We check the spacing from inside the loft and measure the opening to suit, then choose the roof window to fit the gap. A roof window sits in the line of the slope, while a flat roof rooflight stands on a kerb above a flat deck, which is why the two need different survey notes.

Older roofs in the village may have been patched over the years, with newer tiles beside weathered ones, and the batten gauge can differ between the two. We read that from the loft and flash the frame to whatever is actually there.

The shaded inner half

A garden room glazed on one or two walls fills with light near the glass. Further in, towards the original house wall, the light thins. The door through to the main house adds to that, because a solid door shuts off the only daylight the hall behind it would have borrowed. A rooflight over the inner half balances the room, so that the whole floor can be used rather than just the part near the garden.

The roof of a garden room is usually flat or very shallow. That suits a flat roof rooflight, which stands on an upstand with the glass tilted slightly or set level, and it suits a roof lantern, which gives a raised, many-sided head of glass. A lantern is the bigger piece of work and the larger structure, and it adds height inside as well as light. On a modest garden room the question is often whether the ceiling has the height to take one, which we measure.

Sun, shade and the fields beyond

Houses near open farmland and orchards can have clear sky in several directions, so the roof of a garden room may receive sun from first morning to evening. Glazing that faces the full sun needs thought: the glass specification, whether a vent is wanted, and whether blinds are sensible. The unit's U-value matters on the performance side too, and our guide to rooflight U-values explains the figures in full.

A lean-to is a different shape of problem. The slope is usually a single plane rising to the house wall, which makes it a natural place for a roof window if the pitch is steep enough. How shallow a slope can go before a roof window stops being the right choice is worked through in the pitch guide.

A lean-to roof is usually lower than the main house roof, so the loft space above its ceiling can be shallow. Where it is, a roof window needs only a short light well, and a sun tunnel has little distance to cover, which keeps the opening small.

Swale Borough Council handles planning applications for Teynham. A lantern is tall enough that on a flat roof it normally falls outside permitted development. Our planning guide sets out when that applies, along with the conditions for roof windows.

If your house lies in the Cellar Hill and Greenstreet conservation area, or close to it, the guide also explains why a conservation area on its own does not remove permitted development; only an Article 4 direction does. The council's own records settle the boundary, and we look at them with you once we have your address.

Doors matter as much as the roof. If the garden room opens into the house through a glazed door, some borrowed light already reaches the hall, and a rooflight can be smaller. If the wall is solid brick, the opening above needs to do more of the work.

A flat roof rooflight stands on an upstand with the glass at a gentle tilt, so rain runs off it and the pane stays clear. The upstand height is measured against the ceiling below before the unit is ordered.

Roof window or sun tunnel

If the room sits under a slope, a roof window brings the most light and a view of the sky. If another room or a loft sits between ceiling and roof, a sun tunnel runs a tube up through that space, with the limit on its length set out in the sun tunnel length guide. On a single-storey utility with a flat roof, a small flat rooflight does the same job.

Moisture is part of a utility room's life. A dryer, a drying rack and a washing machine all add damp air, so an opening unit lets it out through the top of the room.

Getting to Teynham

The M2 comes close at the Sittingbourne junction, and the parish lies immediately north of the A2. The survey starts in the room you are unhappy with.

At the survey we look at the rafters and the roof covering, then at how the room is used. We handle the Building Control notification where the work is notifiable, and the 10-year workmanship guarantee is given to you in writing.

The pages for Faversham and Sittingbourne describe the housing in each. Message us on WhatsApp at 07880 284133, write to info@orchardskylightsmaidstone.co.uk, or use the quote form.

If your utility room is part of a larger conversion, tell us what else is changing. A new bathroom, a boiler move or a rewired ceiling can all affect where a tube or a frame can run, and it is simpler to plan the opening once than to cut round services later.