Skylights and rooflights in Ebbsfleet Valley
Ebbsfleet Valley is a new town and redevelopment area beside Gravesend, with a high-speed station at its centre. Houses built for open living still end up with a hallway, a stair or a loft room that no window reaches, and the roof can supply the light.
- Free survey, fixed written quote
- 10-year workmanship guarantee
Where an Ebbsfleet Valley house goes dim, by build date
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1 Houses of the 2000s The international station opened in November 2007, and houses from those years are often deep, with an open-plan ground floor. The hall and stairs end up in the core of the plan with no outside wall. -
2 Homes from 2015 onward The Development Corporation was set up in 2015, and homes from the years since are often tall and narrow, with a stair core in the centre. The top landing is the first place to lose its daylight. -
3 Older houses with a later extension A house that is older than the redevelopment and has since gained a rear kitchen can have a flat roof over the new space. That roof is usually where the light can go back in.
A new town built around a river valley
Recent houses are planned for wide fronts, and the middle of the plan pays for it.
Ebbsfleet Valley takes its name from the valley of the Ebbsfleet River, which it straddles, and the river has been so important to history and prehistory that archaeologists have excavated here for years. The name itself is an artificial creation of a seventeenth-century antiquarian. What stands on the ground today is a redevelopment area within the Thames Gateway, a region of regeneration that spans the Thames Estuary. An outline application for Ebbsfleet Central went in during 1996, the international station followed in November 2007, and Ebbsfleet Central is described as a mixed-use project around that station. Domestic services on High Speed 1 run from here to St Pancras in central London, operated by Southeastern.
A town planned across those decades has a different daylight problem from a Victorian terrace, and it starts with the shape of the plan.
Myth
A modern house has been designed for good daylight, so the hallway cannot need a rooflight.
Fact
A hall in the centre of a deep plan has no external wall. Light from above is often the only way to reach it.
The hallway with no wall to the outside
Houses of recent decades often have wide fronts and open living at the back. The garden side gets big glass, the street side gets the door, and in between sits a hallway with the stairs, a cloakroom and sometimes a utility room. None of these has an outside wall. A hall like that can look well lit in a photograph taken on a sunny day and feel dim by the end of a winter afternoon, because all of its light is borrowed from the rooms next door.
Where the stairs rise under a pitched roof, a roof window directly above the stairwell is the simplest fix. It lights the top landing first, then the flight below, and the glow carries down into the hall if the stairwell is open. In a house with a flat roof over the core, a flat rooflight does the same from above. We check the structure first, because the stair void has to line up with the roof opening for the light to travel. The roof window page and the flat roof rooflight page cover the two products.
Rooms that are the wrong shape for a window
A cloakroom or a downstairs shower room in the centre of the plan has no wall to put a window in at all. If there is clear space above it through the loft, a sun tunnel brings daylight in through a small ceiling diffuser, with far less disturbance than a structural alteration. The survey tells us whether the run through the loft is clear. In a plan that is two rooms deep and open at the back, the middle can be short of daylight. The glass for it goes into the roof directly above.
Kitchen extensions and the planning route
Sooner or later a house here may gain a kitchen extension across the back, and that is when the room behind it starts to dim. Its old window now looks into the new space, and the flat roof of the extension sits right where the light used to arrive. A rooflight placed where old meets new lets daylight fall into both rooms, and a lantern gives the kitchen a taller ceiling at the same time. A garage turned into a utility or a study raises the same question, since the old garage had no window to the side and a flat or low-pitched roof overhead.
Planning for a new-build house
Dartford Borough Council handles planning applications for Ebbsfleet Valley. A house built in the recent redevelopment may have had its permitted development rights taken away by a condition attached when the original permission was granted. We look for it at the start, and the planning guide for skylights shows how you can read your own decision notice. Flat-roofed lanterns raise their own planning question, and the roof lantern planning guide deals with it. Where the extension roof is flat, the choice is usually between a low rooflight that sits close to the deck and a lantern that rises above it. The first keeps the roofline plain and suits a shallow ceiling void. The second brings more light into the middle of a deep room and needs the height to look right from the garden. We work out which fits from the joist depth, the ceiling height and the position of the doors, and the quote spells out the upstand so that you can see what is being built.
Building Control
We handle the Building Control notification where the work is notifiable. The Building Regulations guide lists what gets checked, and a loft room adds the question of the way out in a fire.
What moves the price of a rooflight at Ebbsfleet
- Size and shape of the openingA wider lantern or a longer run of glass needs a bigger opening and more structure round it.
- The roof underneathA timber flat roof, a concrete deck and a tiled slope each need different work to form the opening.
- The glass specificationSolar control, self-cleaning and acoustic glazing all change the unit.
- Access to the roofScaffolding, a crane lift or a carry through the house adds time.
- Finishing insidePlastering the reveals, a plasterboard return or a decorated lining each have a cost.
Surveying in Ebbsfleet Valley
Going north-west out of Maidstone, Ebbsfleet Valley is 19 miles by road. The survey costs nothing, and the quote it produces is fixed and written down. If the roof is framed with trussed rafters, the spacing and the web members inside the loft decide where a roof window can sit without a structural redesign. That is the first thing we look at once we are up the ladder, before we promise a position. A top-floor landing is a good example: it is usually the darkest part of a tall house, and a window in the slope above it lights the flight below as well. A loft room with a sloping ceiling also benefits from a window set low enough to give a view out when you are seated at a desk, which is a measurement we take on the day with the furniture in mind. Where the room has a dormer or a gable end, the roof windows sit in the slopes beside it and share the work. A study lit from the roof also helps with screens: daylight from above falls across a desk without the glare that a low window gives, which matters if the room doubles as a place to work from home. We also look at which way the slope faces, since a unit on a sunny pitch needs a blind chosen with it.
Terms on a loft or hall quote
- Rafter spacing
- The gap between roof timbers, which sets which sizes of roof window fit without cutting a rafter.
- Stair void
- The open space above a staircase, through which light from the roof can reach the hall.
- Trimming
- The framing round a new opening that carries the load the cut timbers used to carry.
- Reveal
- The sloping lining between the glass and the ceiling inside.
In the loft
A tall, narrow house often has a room in the roof, a study or a bedroom or a play space, with one gable window or a single small window at one end. The sloping sides of such a room are the darkest part. A roof window on each slope lights those sloping sides. We measure the rafter spacing, the depth of insulation already up there and the height of the floor below, because those decide which sizes of unit fit between the timbers without cutting more of the structure than necessary. If the room is new, escape comes up first, and the Building Regulations guide explains how.
From the hallway to the roof
The hallway and stairs are where a survey in a recent house usually starts. We stand at the foot of the stairs, look up the stairwell, and find the roof above it from outside. If the stair void sits under the main slope, a roof window there is straightforward. If there is a flat section over it, a flat rooflight takes its place. Where a sun tunnel is the better answer, we check the run through the loft for pipes, cables and insulation before we price it. Each dark room on the list is looked at in the same visit, so one climb into the loft covers the hall, the landing and any cloakroom.
Next we go through the rest of the house with you. A downstairs cloakroom, a utility room, a landing or a first-floor bathroom may all be candidates, and one quote can include more than one opening if that makes the best use of the scaffold. When the work is complete, the paperwork and a 10-year workmanship guarantee reach you in writing.
Photos of the dark room sent by WhatsApp on 07880 284133 help us arrive prepared. Email is info@orchardskylightsmaidstone.co.uk, and the quote form does the same job. Swanscombe lies a short way to the north-east of Ebbsfleet Valley and Stone to the north-west, and we survey both: see Swanscombe and Stone.
Dim halls in new-build homes
Our house was built in the last twenty years and the hallway has no window. What would you fit?
Over the stairwell, where the stairs sit under a pitched roof, a roof window is the usual choice; a flat rooflight takes that place if the roof above the core is flat. A hall below a deep loft with no stair void can take a sun tunnel.
Did the planning permission for my new-build take away my permitted development rights?
Sometimes it does. Councils can attach a condition removing them when they grant permission for a development, and the only way to know is to read the decision notice for your house. The planning guide shows what to look for.
Who signs off the work in Ebbsfleet Valley?
The council's building control team or a registered building control approver. We handle the Building Control notification where the work is notifiable, and the completion paperwork reaches you at the end.
A previous owner added a rear kitchen and the room behind it is dark. Can one rooflight light both?
A rooflight set over the join between the two can reach into both rooms, and a lantern with taller glass sends light a little further. How far it carries depends on the depth of the extension and the height of the ceiling.
Which products do you install in a tall, narrow house?
Roof windows over stairs and in loft rooms, sun tunnels for small interior rooms, flat rooflights and lanterns over any flat-roofed rear extension. We also replace existing units of every type on our site.
Nearby towns to Ebbsfleet Valley
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