Skylights and rooflights for stone terraces in Cleckheaton, from the stair to the back kitchen

Lighting the stair

A roof window set in the slope above the stairwell throws light down the full height of the flight. The landing brightens first, then the hall, and daylight reaches the middle room through its door when the door stands open. This works best when the stair runs under the roof slope. Where the stair hugs the party wall, we look at the direction of the rafters and at where an opening could sit between two of them.

Using the attic

If the top floor is a loft room, the roof window becomes its main source of light, and the room under the slope gets daylight from above. A centre-pivot window suits a room where a bed or a desk sits below it. A top-hung window gives clear headroom if people will stand at the opening.

A tube for the smaller room

Where a washroom or a small landing sits right under the roof, a sun tunnel does the job with a far smaller opening. A straight, rigid run from dome to ceiling delivers the most light, and a flexible tube loses more along the way.

What we measure from the middle room

We stand in the middle room and look up. If the ceiling has a bedroom above it, we go upstairs and see where the roof slope meets the floor, then into the loft to see whether the space is clear. Each of those steps is quick, and together they show whether a unit can reach the room directly or whether the stair is the better target. A tape and a torch do most of the work.

Whichever room you start from, the quote you receive is a single fixed figure in writing, tied to that room and the unit chosen for it.

Blue slate

Thin slate lies flat, in overlapping rows. Rain runs over the slates and is drawn into the gaps between them, so the flashing around a frame has to be shaped to lie under the slate above and over the slate below. Old slates are brittle. They are lifted by hand and the sound ones go back, while a broken one is replaced with a slate of similar size and colour.

Stone slate

Stone slate is thicker and uneven, and it is laid in diminishing courses, with the largest at the eaves and the smallest near the ridge. It is heavy, and each piece is different, so the opening has to be planned around the courses rather than a tidy grid. A rooflight in this kind of roof is chosen with a low profile so that the frame does not stand up from the stone.

Why the frame sits low

A slim frame close to the roof plane looks calmer from the street, and it throws less shadow across the slates. That is the idea behind the conservation rooflight: a thin dark frame, often with one glazing bar. On a stone terrace it sits low against the stone slates.

Planning

Planning questions in Cleckheaton go to Kirklees Council. The Town Hall and the library are among the town's listed buildings. Whether a given house needs to ask it first depends on the building, and the rules on permission for rooflights are laid out in one place on this site. We look at the house type before a unit is ordered.

Weight and fixings

A stone slate roof carries real weight on its timbers, and the rafters of an old terrace may be well spaced and slightly irregular. The frame is fixed to the rafters, not to the slates, and we note how sound the timber is around the opening.

Underneath the covering, the work is the same whatever the stone or slate: a framed opening, a flashing made for the roof and a plastered reveal inside.

Pitched or flat

If the outshut roof has a clear slope, a roof window designed for that pitch can go in. Makers set a minimum pitch for each model, so we check the angle of your roof before one is picked. If the roof is almost level, or built of felt, rubber or fibreglass, a flat rooflight on a kerb is the right product. Each covering takes its own upstand, and the edge of the covering is dressed up the kerb so water cannot get under it.

Light for a narrow room

A rooflight in the middle of a narrow kitchen lights the work surface and the table at once. Because the room is narrow, even a fairly small unit fills it. Where the outshut ceiling follows the slope of its roof, the opening above the worktop stays shallow. Glass that reaches today's U-value standard of 2.2 W/m²K for a rooflight keeps the heat in better than the old single-glazed roof it replaces.

Opening for air

A kitchen in a terrace gets steam and cooking smells. An opening rooflight lets them out, and an electric model has a switch or remote, so you do not need a pole to open it. That helps when the unit sits over the middle of a worktop.

After the job

Indoors, the plasterer's work on the opening is finished to the standard in the quote, and the floor and worktops stay covered while the roof is open. The kitchen stays usable apart from the area under the opening.