Skylights and rooflights for Victorian terraces in Normanton and its older streets

Roofs that do sit over the room

Some terraces have an outrigger or a single-storey kitchen behind the main block. If the dining room opens into that part, a flat roof rooflight over the kitchen end throws daylight through the open doorway and across the table. The guide to fitting a rooflight into an existing flat roof goes through the kerb and the covering.

Lighting the stair next to it

Where the dining room has no roof of its own, the stair beside it often does. A roof window above the stairwell lights the landing, and with the doors open the hall below gets a share. It will not turn a dining room into a conservatory, and what it adds is real but modest.

Taking a wall away

Some owners have opened the wall between the middle room and the kitchen. That lets the rear windows and any kitchen rooflight light both rooms. It is a building project of its own, with a steel beam, and the rooflight can go in as part of it.

Using the extension roof well

Floor space is tight in a terrace, and a rooflight takes none. A through-terrace rarely has spare floor to give away, so the roof is where the extra daylight has to come from.

If you are already planning a rear extension, the roof of the new part is the easiest moment to add glass, because the structure is open and the covering is new. The upstand for a rooflight is built with the roof rather than cut into it later. A narrow terrace plot gives a long thin extension, and a rooflight set toward the house end lights the dining room best, while one at the garden end only repeats the garden doors.

What goes in the quote

When we have seen the plan of the house, we say which of these routes reaches your room, and the quote then names the room and the unit with its size.

Opening the roof

Scaffold or a safe working platform goes up first, because a roof of this height is not worked from a ladder alone. The floors and stair below are covered before the first slate comes off.

We strip the slates from the opening and a margin around it by hand, keeping the sound ones for the finish. A slate that breaks is swapped for the closest match we can find. The frame is screwed to the rafters and trimmed in, and the flashing comes next.

Flashing against slate

Slate lies thin and flat, so the flashing kit made for it has narrow flats that slide under the slates, and the top edge tucks beneath the course above. Rain is carried down the sides of the frame and out onto the slates below. A kit made for a thick tile would stand proud and let water in, so the kit follows the roof.

Choosing the back slope

Terraced houses present one slope to the street, and a window there is on view along the whole row. The back slope is the usual choice. If the stairs run up the back of the house, a rear window still lights them. We give the height and projection limits under planning permission for roof windows, and Wakefield Council is the body to ask about a particular street.

The ceiling below

Below the frame, a lined shaft drops to a hole cut in the ceiling. In a terrace the ceiling below is often the landing, which keeps the well short. Lining, insulation and a plastered reveal finish the well.

Sizing against the stairs

A terraced stair is narrow, and a window over it wants to be about as wide as the stair itself. A wider unit lights more of the landing but needs more rafters cut and a wider flashing. The guide to VELUX sizes and codes shows how the standard sizes are named.

What the opening is for

Heat from the whole house drifts up to the top of a stair. An opening rooflight at that point lets it out, and cooler air is drawn in through the windows below. The guide to opening rooflights for ventilation sets this out.

Power on the landing

Think first about where you would want to stand to work it. A switch beside the top of the stairs is natural, and a handset can live in a drawer on the landing.

The motor needs a supply, so a cable has to run to the unit. In a terraced house that usually means a spur from the landing lighting circuit or the nearest socket, run through the loft. Wiring is part of the job, and the position of the switch is chosen with you. Electric rooflights also come in solar-powered versions, so the choice between electric, solar and manual is worth reading first.

Rain at the opening

Any opening rooflight is a moving part, so the seal and the gutter detail around it matter, a subject the guide covers in full under whether opening rooflights leak.

When the stair is lit by the gable

Some terraces have a stair rising against the end wall, and a small gable window lights the top flight. An opening unit on the slope above it adds ventilation at the highest point of the house, where the gable window cannot. Because the ceiling is high, the unit is also worth a thought for cleaning. A manual rooflight at that height gets cleaned less often than one that opens at the press of a button, and the glass shows it.