Skylight and rooflight fitting in Five Oak Green

The dining room in the middle

A cottage or small semi often has the front room on the lane, the kitchen at the back and a dining room wedged between them. It may have a single window facing the street, or a door that borrows light from the kitchen. Once the kitchen is extended into the garden, the dining room loses its connection to the back of the house. The new roof is flat, or pitched at a low angle, and sits directly over the place where the light used to come in. A rooflight at the dining room end of the extension lights the new kitchen and carries through the doorway into the room behind. A lantern throws that light further and lifts the ceiling, if the room has the height. The flat roof rooflight page explains the first product and the roof lantern page the second.

Older village houses often have low ceilings. A dining room with a ceiling below the usual height needs a rooflight with a shallow upstand, and the choice of frame and glass makes a visible difference to how the unit looks from below. We note the ceiling height and the joist depth for that reason.

Oasts and barns

The village oast house, Moat Farm Oast, has been converted. It is also an example of something that applies to any building that started life as something else. Where a building was a barn, an oast, an office or a shop before it became a home, and the conversion went through change-of-use permitted development, an ordinary house's permitted development is missing, and a new roof window may need a planning application. The skylight planning guide explains the rule. The first question we ask about a conversion is how the building became a home.

Roofs on converted farm buildings are often large and plain, with long clear slopes. That makes them good candidates for a row of roof windows in a line, or a single wide one over the main room. Inside, deep floors and thick walls leave the middle of the plan far from any window, and the roof carries that light.

Village roofs, old and new

Older cottage roofs may have timbers of uneven size and spacing, so the position of a roof window is set by what we find in the loft. We specify the flashings for the tile profile on your roof at the survey. Extended houses often carry two or three roof types at once, a tiled main roof, a lower pitched section over a side addition and a flat roof over the kitchen, and each one calls for a different product and a different method of weatherproofing.

The bathroom case

A bathroom raises extra questions. A small room often has no slope overhead for a roof window to sit in. A sun tunnel with a diffuser in the ceiling suits that room well, and the bathroom sun tunnel page covers the practical points. If the bathroom sits directly under a slope with space above it, a roof window can light it and open for ventilation. We look at the loft above the bathroom for pipes, tanks and the cold-water cistern before suggesting either, since the position of each can move the unit a few hundred millimetres along the slope or rule a straight tube out. A bathroom extractor fan usually has its own duct up there as well, and the tube has to keep clear of it.

Bathrooms in village houses are often squeezed into a former bedroom or a landing extension, with a window the size of a tea tray. Frosted glass in that window keeps privacy but passes little light.

Low roofs over side additions

A low-pitched or flat roof over a side addition is the quickest route to a dining room's missing light. We check the covering and the falls, since they set the flashing or the upstand, and the position of the unit follows the doorway or the window the room already has.

Landings in a house that grew room by room

An extended house can leave its landing without a window, and the stairwell carries any daylight down to the hall. A roof window over the well lights the landing first and the hall by borrowing. Where the loft is cramped, a tube does the same job through a smaller hole.

Sign-off

We handle the Building Control notification where the work is notifiable, and the Building Regulations guide sets out what is checked and by whom. The completion certificate is worth keeping with the house papers.

The box room

A box room over the stairs is among the smallest rooms in a house, with a sloping ceiling and a gable window just big enough to see out of. Fitted into the slope, the glass adds sky to the view as well as daylight to the floor. A bed or a desk under the sloping part of the ceiling is the usual layout, so the sill height is chosen with that furniture in mind, and a unit that opens can be reached from where you sit. We measure the rafters, the height from floor to the sill and the pitch of the slope, since a window set too low will look only at tiles. In a room that small, a modest unit does the work, and the choice between a fixed window and one that opens depends on whether you want the ventilation.

Dining room and bathroom together

Where a dining room and a bathroom sit close to each other on the plan, one roof opening on each floor can sometimes serve both in the same visit. We note the position of the soil stack and the drains, the lights and sockets in the ceiling and the covering on the roof. Those details decide the shortlist of products that fit. A ceiling that carries a light fitting or an extractor duct can often take the opening beside it, and the electrician's route for any new wiring is agreed before the opening is cut. In an older house the plaster may be lime or lath, which needs gentler handling than modern board, and we plan the making good with that in mind.

Each line on the quote is tied to a job on your roof: the unit, the opening, the flashings or upstand, the plastering round the reveals and the clearing away at the end. When the work ends, a 10-year workmanship guarantee is handed over as a written document.

Photos by WhatsApp on 07880 284133 are the quickest way to begin, and info@orchardskylightsmaidstone.co.uk takes email. The quote form sits at the foot of the page. The villages and towns around Five Oak Green, among them Paddock Wood, East Peckham and Hadlow, are on our survey list as well.