Skylights and rooflights for terraces, villas and old townhouses in Wakefield

Listed houses

For a listed house, a new rooflight needs listed building consent in its own right, and permitted development does not alter that. A Georgian townhouse may be listed, and a listing covers the roof and its slates as well as the front. We ask the question at the first call, because the answer settles whether a rooflight is possible and what paperwork follows.

Conservation areas

Inside a conservation area the question is how the roof looks from the street. A front slope is seen from the street and a rear slope facing the garden is not, so the rear is the simplest place to put a unit. Where the stair is nearer to the road than the garden, we look for another position that still reaches the room.

The unit officers expect

On older slate roofs the unit that tends to fit is a conservation rooflight. The frame is slim, usually black steel or aluminium, with a glazing bar down the middle in many designs, and the whole unit lies close to the slates. A standard roof window stands a little prouder and has a thicker frame. So it sits better on a rear slope or a newer roof.

Replacing what is already there

An older roof may already have a rooflight, sometimes a heavy cast-iron or timber one. Swapping it for a modern sealed unit in the same opening changes the look of the roof far less than adding a new opening, though a listed building can still need consent, so the check happens first.

What an application shows

A proposal sets out how large the unit is, how many are proposed and how they line up with the windows below. A single unit on a back slope is a simpler proposal than a row of them facing the road, and we take the roof as it stands before any of that is settled.

Choosing between a window and a tube

A roof window over the top landing floods that landing and spills down the well. A sun tunnel is a narrower answer: a dome on the slope, a reflective tube and a diffuser in the ceiling, and a rigid tube carries more light down a long run than a flexible one. Where the well is tight or the roof pitch is awkward, the tunnel may be the only unit that fits.

A deep light well

A tall house often has a long gap between the slope and the ceiling, and the light well that fills it is deeper than it would be in a terrace. A well that widens as it falls spreads the daylight into the landing instead of dropping it in one narrow spot. We measure the well from inside the loft.

Loft rooms need a safe way out

If the loft is to be a bedroom, escape comes first. In a two-storey house the loft conversion is served by a protected stair under Approved Document B, and a roof window does not count as the escape route. Bungalows and chalet bungalows differ: there a roof window may serve as the escape route from a room in the roof, so long as it sits within the height Approved Document B allows.

Slate, tile and the flashing

Wakefield roofs run from slate on the older houses to concrete tile on the later ones, and the flashing kit has to suit whichever you have. Slate lies flat and thin, so its kit is cut for a shallow profile. A concrete tile is deeper and needs a kit shaped round that depth. We record what is on the slope, because fitting the wrong kit would leave gaps the weather finds.

What the written quote says

Once that consent is in place, the written quote is fixed. It sets down the room, the unit and its dimensions. Where the work needs Building Control, we make the notification. That one page is what you pass to the management company.

Units that suit a top-floor flat

• A sun tunnel for a hall or bathroom with the roof directly overhead.
• A flat roof rooflight where the building has a flat roof section above the flat.
• A roof window where the flat has rooms in a sloping roof.

When the roof cannot reach

Flats lower down a building are harder, because a tube or a light well would have to pass through homes above. We can tell quickly whether the roof can serve the room at all. If it cannot, we say so before any quote is written.

Flat roofs over shops and offices

Some buildings in the centre have a flat roof section over the top floor. A flat rooflight set into that roof lights a kitchen or a hall below it, and the covering, whether felt, EPDM or GRP, sets the upstand it needs. The lease sets out whose consent is needed here too, whatever the roof is covered with.