Rooflight and Skylight Services

How to choose between them

Most people arrive knowing the room they want lit rather than the product they want fitted, which is the right way round. The distinctions above matter less than two things about your building: the pitch of the roof the unit is going into, and whether that roof is warm or cold above the ceiling line.

On a pitched roof, a roof window sits in the plane of the slope and opens on a hinge. On a flat roof, glazing sits on a kerb built up above the deck so water runs away from it rather than towards it. A roof lantern is a flat-roof unit with a pitched glazed frame above the kerb, which is why it turns up over kitchen extensions and rarely anywhere else. Those three cover most enquiries. The rest are variations on how the unit opens, whether it is electric, and how large a span the frame has to carry.

What the survey settles

Every one of these services starts the same way, with somebody in the roof space looking at the structure rather than at the ceiling. Rafter depth and spacing decide how wide an opening can be formed without a designed alteration. The existing build-up decides whether a vapour control layer has to be introduced and where it sits. The covering decides how the perimeter is detailed, and the covering is often not what the front of the house suggests.

The survey also settles the permission question, which is the one people most often get wrong in both directions. A great deal of rooflight work sits inside permitted development and needs nothing but a Building Regulations notification. Work on a listed building needs consent whether or not the slope faces the street. Conservation areas fall between the two and turn on the individual designation rather than on the label.

Installations and replacements only

We fit new units and we take out failed ones and fit new ones in their place. We do not take on remedial roofing work, and we will say so plainly on the phone rather than after a survey. It is a narrow scope held on purpose: the four details that decide whether a rooflight stays watertight are all installation details, and a firm that does everything to a roof is rarely the firm that gets those four right every time.