Skylight and rooflight fitting in Kings Hill
Kings Hill was built from 1989 on the former RAF West Malling airfield. In a house on an estate, the rooms that can lose daylight are the ones at the back or in the middle: a garden room, a back bedroom, a stairwell.
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Flat roofs and pitched slopes in Kings Hill
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1 A garden room under a flat roof The room is built against the original back wall, which once held the house's own window or door. Overhead is a flat roof with room for a rooflight or a lantern. -
2 A back bedroom under the pitch One window on the garden side lights a bedroom only so far. A roof window high on the back pitch reaches the end that wall glass leaves dim. -
3 A stairwell with a loft above Stairs and landing sit between walls and can have no window of their own. A loft overhead leaves space for light to come down.
A planned estate on an old airfield
Kings Hill is a civil parish in the borough of Tonbridge and Malling, about 9 miles west of Maidstone. The A228 passes the village, and the development was what led to its major expansion; on the roundabout north of the business park stands L'Ambiente, a 45 ft obelisk-style sculpture by Enzo Torcoletti. Building began in 1989 near West Malling, on ground that had been RAF West Malling, an airfield in use through both world wars. Liberty Property Trust carried out the principal development, with a stated aim of some 2,750 homes and two million square feet of commercial property. In May 2010 plans were unveiled to redevelop the airfield's derelict control tower and the land around it. A development that began in 1989 can put houses of different decades side by side, so we ask the age of your own house before suggesting anything for its roof.
| Room | Roof over it | What we would look at |
|---|---|---|
| Garden room | Flat roof, built against the original back wall | Flat rooflight, or a raised lantern if the room carries one |
| Back bedroom | Rear slope of the main pitch | Roof window in the slope, set level with the tiles |
| Stairwell | Main pitch, loft space over the landing | Roof window above the landing, or a tube-type sun tunnel across the loft |
Starting with the garden room
A garden room usually has a back wall that belonged to the house first, and that wall may once have held a kitchen window, a dining-room window or a patio door. The room now stands outside it. Daylight for the house behind has to pass through the new space, and glass in the garden room's own walls lights only the first stretch of the floor. When the room has a flat roof, the answer is overhead: a flat rooflight over the half nearest the house, or a roof lantern if the span suits one, and we measure the span of the flat roof first, since that sets the size the opening can take. Seen from the side, a lantern rises further above the roof than a flat unit does, which is why it tends to raise a planning question that a flat rooflight does not. The detail is in our planning guide.
A back bedroom with one window
Take a bedroom at the back of the first floor with a single window onto the garden. The window lights the middle of the room well enough, but the corner behind the door and the end under the eaves, where the ceiling follows the rafters down, can stay dim through the afternoon. A roof window set high on the back pitch lights that end from above and gives the room a view of the sky over the garden. Before we pick a size we check the rafter spacing, the position of the loft hatch and the direction the slope faces. A roof window is fitted level with the tiles, so from the garden it looks like part of the roof. The opening is boxed and finished ready for paint.
The stairwell
A staircase occupies the centre of the plan, with a landing above it and a wall on each side. Where the stairs have no window, the landing borrows from open bedroom doors and the hall at the bottom takes whatever the front door lets in. Daylight dropped from the roof arrives at the top of the well and runs down it. With a loft above the landing, a roof window can do that. Where the loft is deep and a roof window would sit a long way from the ceiling, a sun tunnel passes it down a reflective tube. We pick between them from the distance between roof and ceiling and from what the loft holds. Sun tunnels need a clear line through the loft, so the route is checked from above before a position is marked.
More than one room in the same house
A single house can have all three problems at once: a garden room on the back, a bedroom above it and a stairwell between. They share a roof, so one visit covers them. We can look at the flat roof over the garden room, the slope above the bedroom and the loft over the landing in the same sitting and quote them together or one at a time. You can start with whichever room you use most and come back to the others later.
What each roof will take
Before the glass, the frame or the finish, the roof under the room settles what can go on it. A flat roof over a garden room is measured for its covering, its fall and the height of any upstand, and those three figures decide whether a flat rooflight or a lantern is the one to price. A pitched slope takes a roof window set between the rafters. A loft with a long drop to the ceiling points to a sun tunnel. Our pages on flat roof rooflights, VELUX windows and sun tunnels describe each.
Roof words that come up on a garden room job
- Upstand
- The short upright edge that a flat-roof rooflight or lantern is fixed to.
- Roof window
- A window fitted level with the surrounding tiles or slates, in the plane of the roof.
- Local planning authority
- For Kings Hill, Tonbridge and Malling Borough Council.
- Listed building consent
- Separate consent for altering a listed building, needed on top of any planning permission.
The flat roof over the garden room
The covering comes first, because a new upstand has to be built into it and sealed. Next is the direction of the joists, since the frame around any opening has to pick up the load those joists carried. Then the glass. Whether the unit opens turns on what the room is used for and which way the garden faces, so we ask both questions before choosing between a fixed rooflight and an electric opening one.
The pitched slope
On a slope the first checks are the tile or slate and the rafter spacing, because the opening sits between rafters or needs a trimmed frame around it. Then comes the slope's direction. A rear slope leaves the front of the house untouched. Side slopes carry conditions of their own, which the planning guide sets out, so we establish which slope your house has before anything is drawn. In a loft room the question is different again: an opening that serves as the escape route has its own size and height rules, which the Building Regulations guide lays out.
A unit that is already there
Some houses already have a rooflight or roof window, and the glass in it has clouded between the panes or the frame no longer closes as it should. We replace units as well as fitting new ones, and the existing opening gives us a starting point for the measurements. Our page on misted rooflights explains the signs to look for. Whatever size the old unit was, we measure the opening itself before ordering the new one, since frames and flashings that suit one rafter layout will not suit another.
Council, listing and sign-off
Planning decisions for Kings Hill sit with Tonbridge and Malling Borough Council, and our skylight planning guide lists the conditions that matter for a rooflight. The old airfield control tower is a listed building. For any listed house, a new or altered roof window will almost always need listed building consent. Opening a roof is also building work, and we handle the Building Control notification where the work is notifiable.
Which way does your garden face?
That one answer shapes a Kings Hill job more than the product name does. A rear slope facing south takes direct sun for long stretches of the day. One facing north gets even light without glare. East and west give a bright morning room or a bright evening room. We ask before we visit, then check the answer against the roof when we stand on it. A garden room facing the sun may call for a different glass or an opening vent that a north-facing one never needs. Glare is the other thing to weigh: a bedroom roof window that looks lovely at nine in the morning can dazzle at noon if the slope faces south, and a blind is worth asking about. If you work or sit in the room, tell us where the screen or the armchair is, and we will place the unit with that in mind.
Myth
Because the estate is recent, a rooflight can go in without anyone checking the planning history.
Fact
A condition on a house's planning permission can remove permitted development rights, so the permission for your own address is what gets checked. The planning guide explains where to look.
Inside, once the roof is open
With the opening formed, we line it from the inside. On a pitched roof the shaft between the roof window and the bedroom ceiling is boxed in and angled so the light spreads along the ceiling instead of landing in a patch. On a flat roof the rooflight or lantern is finished with internal reveals. The room is left ready for decorating, and the loft above a stairwell keeps its hatch and its storage clear of the sun tunnel's tube.
Getting a survey
West Malling lies north of the estate, Larkfield north-east and Wateringbury south, and a job in any of them follows the same pattern as one in Kings Hill. A free survey comes first, then a quote with one fixed figure. WhatsApp reaches us on 07880 284133, email on info@orchardskylightsmaidstone.co.uk, and the quote form is below.
Garden rooms, back bedrooms and stairwells
What suits the flat roof on our garden room?
A flat rooflight is the straightforward choice. A raised lantern gives a taller glazed ceiling, but it usually needs an application first, unless the council has confirmed that it does not. Where a given roof lands is explained in the planning guide.
Who decides whether our Kings Hill house needs planning permission?
Planning decisions for the parish sit with Tonbridge and Malling Borough Council. The answer starts with what kind of house you have and what the unit would look like on its roof, and the history of your own address can change it. Tell us the age of the house and whether it has been extended, and the survey can start from those facts.
Our back bedroom is dim at the far end and the roof is tiled. What would you fit?
Put a roof window into the back slope over the dark end of the room. Rafter spacing and the loft hatch set its size, so those get measured before any quote is written. If the dim end is under the eaves, we also note how far the ceiling slopes before it meets the wall, since that sets how high up the slope the unit can go.
Nearby towns to Kings Hill
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