Skylights and rooflights in Sittingbourne

What an industrial past leaves in the street

Towns that grew around mills and brickworks often have streets of terraces and pairs of semis, built close together. In houses like that, a kitchen extension on the back or side is the usual way to add space, and it changes where the light falls.

Take a kitchen extension that runs along the side of a semi. The neighbour's wall closes one flank, and the garden doors face a fence instead of open sky. The room is bright by the glass and flat and grey in the corner where the wall is. Nothing can be glazed in that wall, but a rooflight over the work surface in the corner can fill the dull end if the roof is flat and has a clear run. Our flat roof rooflight page explains what we look at on a roof like that.

Where the same extension has a lean-to or a hipped slope, the unit goes into the slope itself, set in line with the tiles. The roof you already have makes that decision for you, and we confirm it from inside the loft or under the deck. Rafters and joists run in one direction, and the width of the glass is chosen to fit between them so that fewer members are cut.

The through-route matters too. A side extension often joins the original house at a door or an opening, and light from the new roof can pass through that opening into the hall behind. A narrow frame placed close to the join works harder than a large one in the middle of the roof.

On a flat extension roof the opening goes through the boarding, the insulation and the covering together, and the upstand carries the waterproofing up the sides of the opening. The falls are checked so that rainwater still runs to the gutter round the new kerb.

What the loft tells us

Before we promise anything, we go up through the hatch. The loft shows the rafter spacing, the age of the felt or boarding under the covering, any water tank or cabling in the way, and how much room there is between the ceiling and the underside of the roof. A cramped, low void rules out a long tube and suggests a short one or a roof window. A tidy, open void leaves more choice. Brick and tile houses built close together often have party walls that rise through the loft, and those walls can fix where the opening may sit, since a frame cannot straddle brickwork.

Bathrooms with no outside wall

Terrace and semi layouts often put the bathroom over the kitchen or in the middle of the first floor, where it has a small obscured window or none at all. With the roof directly above, a roof window brings daylight and can be opened to let moisture leave. Where a loft lies between the ceiling and the roof, a sun tunnel for a bathroom takes light down through that gap in a tube. The loft is the first place we look, because the route above the ceiling decides which of the two is possible.

Glass in a bathroom roof meets steam every day. That puts weight on the sealing, the ventilation and the glazing specification. The pipe runs and any extractor duct are marked before anything is cut.

Light by the hour

The best answer depends on when you use the room. A lounge used mainly after dark gains little from a skylight in the evening, but one that doubles as a daytime workspace gains more. Sunlight through a roof window moves across the floor through the day, so position matters. A north-facing slope gives a steady, even light, while a south-facing one brings sun and heat, which the glazing choice and blinds can manage. The guide on rooflights and overheating goes through those options.

Early mornings are different again. A rear lounge facing east can be bright by seven and dim by noon, and a rooflight evens out that swing. A west-facing slope brings low evening sun through the glass, which a blind or the glazing specification can manage. A through-lounge that has lost one of its end windows to a later extension is the clearest case, since the roof then supplies the daylight the wall used to.

Halls, landings and stairs

The hall of a terrace or a semi stretches back from the front door, and the staircase often rises along one side of it. The landing at the top then has no window of its own. Put glazing in the back slope over the stair, or run a tube down through the loft, and a column of daylight drops through the stairwell. An open balustrade passes it on to the hall below. A stair is open to every floor it serves, so the light travels a long way down it.

Blinds on a landing window are worth discussing at the survey, since a window that lights the stairs at seven may also light the bedroom door at five in summer.

Hall ceilings and sun tunnels

A hall with a loft above it can take a sun tunnel, and the dome on the roof is the only part seen from outside. The diffuser in the hall ceiling is a flat panel or a shallow dome that sits close to the plaster. The run is traced from the hatch so that the tube clears joists, wiring and pipes, and the length of the run decides whether rigid or flexible tubing suits it. The shorter and straighter the route, the more daylight reaches the hall.

Making good indoors

Once the glass is in, the shaft or reveal is lined and the plaster made good up to the ceiling edge. The floors between the front door and the room are covered for the job, and the stairs stay clear where the work is on a landing.

Planning, the conservation area and Building Control

Swale Borough Council is the planning authority here. Whether a particular rooflight needs an application is worked through, with the conditions set out, in the planning permission guide. Sittingbourne has conservation areas, among them one named Sittingbourne, and a conservation area on its own does not remove permitted development rights; only an Article 4 direction does. If your house falls inside one, the Article 4 guide shows what would, and would not, change the position, and the council's own map settles the boundary.

A new roof opening is building work. We handle the Building Control notification where the work is notifiable, and the Building Regulations guide lists what the checks cover, from the structure round the opening to the glazing's energy rating.

Roofs in any older town may have been re-covered or extended over the years. Where an old extension sits under a newer one, the roof build-up can be thicker than the outside suggests. That depth changes the upstand or the length of tube, and it is one more reason the measurement is taken on site.

Getting here and getting started

Sittingbourne lies roughly 12 miles north-east of Maidstone by road. The station has regular mainline and high-speed services to London Victoria and St Pancras, as well as to Canterbury, Dover and Ramsgate. We book a visit around your working hours, and you do not need to be in for the whole of it once we have seen the room and the roof.

The visit costs nothing. Afterwards you receive one written quotation at a fixed figure, and our 10-year workmanship guarantee is put in writing as well. WhatsApp is the quickest route, on 07880 284133, with a photo of the room. Email works too, at info@orchardskylightsmaidstone.co.uk, and so does the quote form further down. From Sittingbourne it is a short hop to Iwade, Newington and Teynham, and we survey in all three.