Slate roofs in Guiseley, with the skylights and rooflights to suit them

The top floor

A box room or a middle bedroom under the roof has the slope directly overhead, and a roof window in that slope lights it without any special work. The frame sits between two rafters and the sloping ceiling lets the light spread across the room.

The stair and the hall below

The stairwell is the open channel through the house. A window or a sun tunnel above the stair lights the landing and lets a share of that light run down the flights to the hall. It is the nearest a terrace comes to a roof lighting the ground floor, and it works best where the stair is open to the roof rather than boxed in.

Reading the roof before the survey

From the street you can already see a good deal. The slope that faces the road, any chimney stacks, and whether the ridge runs front to back or side to side all affect where a window can go. A terrace with the ridge parallel to the street has a long front slope and a long rear slope, and the rear one usually offers a quieter position. Mention which rooms bother you most when you book and we start from those.

Rooms with floors above them

A ground-floor middle room with bedrooms over it has no clear path to the roof. A sun tunnel can run through a floor only where the rooms above allow a tube, and that is seldom practical. Where we find no sensible route, we name the nearer rooms that would benefit instead.

Centre-pivot or top-hung

How the sash opens changes what the room can hold. A centre-pivot sash swings about its middle bar, so a bed or a desk can stand beneath it without being struck. A top-hung sash swings out and up from its top edge, leaving a clear gap at the sill. Our comparison of a sun tunnel against a roof window helps where either would fit.

Taking the slates off

Slates are lifted by hand and stacked in the order they came off. The nails of an old roof can rust through, and a slate that has slipped is easy to snap, so lifting them is slow work. Any slate that does break is replaced with one from the same stock or a close colour match, so the area weathers in with the rest.

Framing and flashing

Trimmers carry the rafters round the opening, the frame is fixed to them, and a flashing kit made for slate is laid in. Slate is thin, and a kit made for a deeper profile would leave the wrong gaps. Along the sides the flashing is stepped under the slates, and along the top it is covered by them.

Valleys, stacks and hips

Stone villas and terraces have chimney stacks, party-wall upstands and sometimes hipped ends. A frame needs a clear run of slate on all four sides, so we measure how much room there is between the stack and the place the window should go.

Why the rafters matter

Old timbers are not always evenly spaced. A unit sized to the gap you have fits without extra work, whereas a unit wider than the gap means cutting and framing, and we work that out on the survey before anything is ordered.

Permission for a slate slope

In a house roof a new rooflight usually falls under permitted development, and whether Guiseley's older streets have any extra limits is covered by our planning and Building Regulations guide.

Plaster and paint indoors

Indoors, the reveal is lined and plastered where the quote says, ready for decorating. If the ceiling is lath and plaster, it is cut cleanly and sheeted below.

A two-storey house

For a loft conversion on a house with two floors below, the means of escape is a protected stair, and a roof window does not take that role. A roof window still has a job in that room: it gives daylight and fresh air, and it should be placed with the stair and the room layout in mind. Your designer can tell you what the stair needs to look like.

A bungalow or chalet bungalow

Bungalows and chalet bungalows are the exception: a room in the roof can use a roof window as its escape window where the sill is within that height. Approved Document B sets minimum sizes for the opening of an escape window; we refer to them on the survey and do not quote figures from memory.

What we do for a loft

We supply and install the roof windows. The conversion itself, including the stair and the fire strategy, belongs to your builder or designer, and we work from their plans. Telling us the position of the stair and the planned bedroom wall lets us place the windows so that furniture and doors do not collide with them.

Where the windows go in a sloping ceiling

In a converted attic the sloping ceiling means a window set high in the slope lights the room from above, while a lower one lights the floor nearer the wall and needs the furniture arranged around it. A pair of windows side by side, with a rafter between them, often lights a bedroom better than one large unit and keeps each frame within the rafter spacing.

Light for the stair below

A loft stair often rises through the old landing. A roof window or sun tunnel placed over that landing helps the whole stairwell, which suits a house where the loft has made the stair the busiest route in it.