Rooflights and skylights for Northiam homes

The landing that has no window

In a two-storey village house the stairs often rise through the middle of the plan, with a bedroom either side. The landing at the top is then a corridor with no outside wall, lit only when a bedroom door stands open. A roof window set into the rear slope above the stairwell fixes this from above, and the light falls down the stair as well as across the landing. Where the stair rises under a hipped or half-hipped roof, the position of the hip changes where the window can sit, and that is something we mark out from inside the loft at the survey.

The back bedroom under the slope

A back bedroom in the roof usually has a low eaves wall, a ceiling that follows the rafters and a single small window, often in a gable. The part of the floor that sits under the slope gets almost nothing. A roof window of the right height puts a patch of sky over the bed and a bright wall beside it, and on a south or west slope it lets the evening in. Headroom decides how big the window can be, and a tall person standing by the bed is the test we use for the sill height. On a steep pitch the window can be taller and narrower; on a shallow one, wider and shorter. Either way the frame has to line up with the rafters, so we mark the opening from inside the loft before anything is ordered.

Hallways behind a porch

The hall in an older cottage may run from a front door with a small porch or inner lobby straight back to the kitchen, with doors to the rooms off both sides. It borrows what light comes through the door glass and little more. A roof window above the hall, linked to the ceiling by a boxed-in shaft running up through the roof space, can give the hall a patch of daylight at the middle. Where that shaft would be awkward, a sun tunnel on a flexible tube can reach down to the ceiling: our page on sun tunnels explains how they work.

Extensions, outbuildings and conversions

Village houses grow. A single-storey extension at the back adds a kitchen or utility room and takes the daylight from whatever sat behind it. A flat roof over that extension is a candidate for a rooflight, and a taller glazed lantern is a different sort of unit with its own planning position; the roof lantern planning guide explains it. Barns, stables and other outbuildings that have become homes can lack the householder rights an ordinary house has, so the first question for a converted building is what it was built as. In a former farm building the roof is often a single large slope with exposed timbers, and the timbers decide where light can go.

Reading the roof from the lane

From the lane, the covering tells us a lot before we climb the ladder. Plain clay tiles, peg tiles, slate and concrete tiles all take different flashing kits, and a roof that has been re-covered once may have newer battens than the rafters under them. Inside, the loft shows whether the ceiling joists are sound, whether there is insulation to cut around, and which rafters a window can sit between. For a hall or landing the price follows the unit and the spacing of the timbers. The roof window range covers the units that fit between standard rafter spacings.

Chimneys, hips and old timbers

Older village houses often have a chimney stack rising through the middle of the roof, and the stack and its flashing can sit between a window and the stairs it was meant to light. The window moves along the slope until it clears the stack, and the framing around the opening is made to suit. A hipped end, where two slopes meet at an angle, leaves a narrower plain section to work with than a gable does.

Older timbers are not always straight or evenly spaced. A rafter that has bowed over the years, or been cut for a former flue, shifts where the trimmers go, which is why the loft is measured before any size is chosen. Pitch changes how a roof window behaves in rain, so the minimum pitch for the chosen unit is checked against the slope before anything is ordered.

A conservation area, and what it changes

There is a Northiam conservation area. Boundaries run street by street, and the council's own map settles whether your address is inside. A conservation area on its own leaves permitted development in place; only an Article 4 direction takes it away. What does shift is the weight given to how a unit looks from the road, so the slope and the profile of the frame become the main questions. A rear slope hidden from the lane is the quieter option, and our conservation area rooflight guide goes through the choices.

If the house is listed

The village has listed buildings of more than one grade, from the mansion at Brickwall to the Crown and Thistle pub. A listed house keeps its permitted development rights, but a new or altered roof window will almost always need listed building consent. The application is made to the council with drawings and a description of the unit, its frame and its glass. Low-profile conservation rooflights with a slim metal frame sit flush in the tiles. The listed buildings guide covers the application.

Building work under the Building Regulations

A new roof opening means trimming rafters, supporting the cut ends, and glazing that meets the energy standard for its type. In a bedroom in the roof, fire and escape rules can apply as well. We handle the Building Control notification where the work is notifiable, and the Building Regulations guide sets out what gets checked. A completion certificate and our 10-year workmanship guarantee, in writing, are filed with the handover paperwork, which a buyer's solicitor may ask for one day.

Getting to the slope

Village plots can have narrow side paths, hedges and sloping gardens, and the way up to the roof affects how a job is run. We look at how scaffold or access towers could be set up, whether a delivery of glass can reach the back of the house, and where tiles can be stacked while the opening is made. A job on a rear slope that the lane cannot see tends to need the least disturbance to the front of the house. The weather on the day matters as well, because a roof is opened and closed in the same visit and a forecast of rain changes the plan.

Tiles that are lifted for a flashing are kept in order and relaid, with the flashing dressed to the profile of the covering. A sun tunnel dome on the rear slope sits low on the tiles and is hard to see from the lane, which suits a house where the front roof is in view.