Skylight Installation in Rushmere St Andrew
- Fixed quote before we start
- Roof never left open overnight
- 10-year workmanship guarantee
- Fixed quote before we start
- 10 years workmanship guarantee
- 25 years fitting rooflights
- Skylights only, not a general roofer
Almost every rooflight enquiry that comes to us from Rushmere St Andrew starts in a loft. The housing here is largely interwar and post-war suburban semis, three-bed, hipped or gabled, with a roof void tall enough at the ridge to tempt anyone into converting it and awkward enough at the eaves to make that conversion real work. Rear extensions too, but the loft is the recurring job.
Straight-line it is about 2.4 miles east-north-east of Ipswich centre, ten minutes on a normal run, so survey visits are easy to schedule.
What a 1920s or 1930s rafter actually gives you to work with
Open up a roof of this age and you find traditional cut carpentry. Rafters cut on site, supported mid-span by a purlin, ridge board at the top. No trusses, no webs in the way, which is the good news, because you can form an opening by trimming between rafters without touching a designed structural element.
The catch is rafter depth. Older stock commonly runs to something around 100×50 section, sized for a short span between purlins and to a standard nobody would use today. Structurally that is usually fine. Thermally it is a problem, because Part L wants a converted loft insulated to a level you cannot reach with 100mm of depth, and part of that depth goes to the ventilation gap anyway. Two routes, and they are not equivalent:
- Insulate between and over the rafters. A rigid board layer sits above the existing rafter line, so the roof plane lifts. That changes tile levels and it changes where the rooflight sits relative to the finished surface.
- Counter-batten below the rafters. Insulation between, plus a layer under, which drops the ceiling. Costs you headroom in a room that probably did not have much to spare.
Either way the rooflight reveal gets deeper, and that is the part people are not warned about. A window set in a 100mm rafter with 90mm of insulation under it sits at the bottom of a reveal well over 200mm deep before plaster. Box that square and you have a light shaft throwing less daylight into the room than the glass area suggests. We splay the reveal, cut back at head and sill.
Plain tile, concrete interlocker, and why the flashing kit is not interchangeable
The original covering on a lot of these roofs is a clay plain tile. Small, flat, double-lapped, laid in large numbers. Others went up under an early concrete interlocking tile, and plenty have been re-covered since with a modern interlocker.
Each needs its own flashing kit. A plain-tile kit dresses tight to a shallow, flat covering. A deep-profile kit is made to bridge the roll of a pantile or a bold interlocker, and it leaves a void over flat tiles. Fit the wrong one and the joint does not fail immediately. It fails in the first winter with real driven rain behind it, which is why so many of these leaks arrive as a mystery. We identify the covering at survey and order to it.
A plain-tile flashing on an interlocking tile roof is a leak with a date on it. Same the other way round, and it is the most common reason a rooflight fitted by a general builder starts weeping two winters later.
Hipped roofs limit where the glass can go
Interwar semis here are often hipped, sometimes at both ends, and that changes the geometry. A hip rafter runs diagonally from corner to ridge carrying load, so you are not trimming into it. The usable rectangle of roof plane is smaller than it looks from the ground and it narrows as you go up.
So on a hipped rear plane you may end up with two smaller units where you wanted one large one, which usually lights the room better anyway. And on a front elevation the sightline matters, because a unit crowded against a hip reads as a mistake from the pavement even when it is watertight. We set out positions on the roof at survey.
Dormer or rooflights only, and what that does to your planning position
The rear dormer is the standard way to get full head height out of one of these lofts. It also puts you in a different regulatory position from a rooflight-only conversion.
Permitted development generally allows a rooflight projecting no more than 150mm above the plane of the existing roof and sitting below the ridge. Stay inside that and a rooflight-only conversion usually avoids a planning application altogether. A dormer has its own volume allowance and its own rules about where it can sit, so it stands a far better chance of needing an application.
Building Regulations apply either way. Part L for insulation, Part B for escape from a habitable loft room, Part K where guarding comes into it. We explain the notification route at survey.
Valleys, and the joint that leaks before anything else does
Interwar semis here rarely stayed as the builder left them. Rear additions, a kitchen outrigger, a later garage tied into the house, and every one of those creates a valley where a secondary roof meets the main hipped slope. A valley is the lowest line on a roof and it carries the most water, so it is the least forgiving place to put a rooflight near. Set a unit too close to a valley and you interrupt the flow down it, the flashing of the two details start competing, and that corner is where the first leak arrives.
So on these houses part of the survey is simply mapping where the valleys run and keeping the rooflight clear of them by a sensible margin. It is also a chance to look at the valley itself, because on stock of this age the valley lining is often old lead or a cement fillet that has had a hard life, and there is no sense fitting a smart new window a metre away from a valley that is on its last winter. We flag it rather than fix it, because we do not offer repairs, but you want to know it is there.
Which way the workable slope faces
Because a hipped roof narrows as it rises, the genuinely usable part of the rear plane on one of these semis is a smaller rectangle than it looks from the garden, and which way it faces decides a lot. A rear plane facing north or east gives even, glare-free daylight but little direct sun, so the glazing choice leans towards a clear high-performance unit that makes the most of a dull sky. A plane facing south or west can overheat a small loft room, so solar-control glazing and an opening vent earn their place. We take the aspect into account when we specify, rather than fitting the same unit to every slope, because a bedroom under a west-facing plane behaves very differently in July from one under a north-facing plane. The reveal is splayed either way, for the daylight and for the airflow across the glass.
What we fit here, and why
- Pitched roof skylight installation, the core job on these roofs. Tiled pitch, cut rafters, flashing matched to the covering.
- VELUX window installation, because most loft conversions here specify a named roof window. We fit VELUX alongside Keylite and Roto.
- Energy efficient skylight installation, which matters more than usual where rafter depth has already forced a compromise on the insulation build-up. The glazing has to pull its weight.
- Flat roof skylight installation for the single-storey rear extensions and flat-roofed outriggers these semis have picked up over the years.
Nearby we also work in Kesgrave, Purdis Farm and Westerfield. The full list is on areas we cover.
Scaffolding a hipped roof, and the access these plots give you
A hipped roof takes more scaffold than a gable-ended one, because there is no flat gable to work off and the slope turns away on more than one face. On a rear plane hard against a boundary that can mean a tighter scaffold and, occasionally, a word with a neighbour about where the standards sit. The saving grace in Rushmere St Andrew is the plots. Interwar and post-war suburban semis here mostly have a driveway or a side gap and a proper back garden, so there is usually a way to bring scaffold, the unit and the timber round to the rear without carrying everything through the house. That keeps the programme tight and the floors clean, which is a genuine cost difference from a mid-terrace where none of that is possible. We confirm the access route at survey and price the scaffold to the roof shape rather than to a standard rate that ignores the hips.
Get a fixed price for your loft
Send the room, the roof pitch if you know it, and a photograph of the tiles. We survey, we quote once, and that figure holds unless you change the specification. Every installation carries a 10-year workmanship guarantee. Request a fixed quote.
My 1930s semi has 100mm rafters. Can I still put a rooflight in a loft conversion?
Yes. The rafter depth does not stop the window going in, it changes the insulation build-up around it. You either add a rigid board layer over the rafters, which lifts the roof plane, or counter-batten below and lose a little headroom. Both make the reveal deeper, so we splay it to keep daylight coming into the room rather than down a box.
Does a rooflight-only loft conversion in Rushmere St Andrew need planning permission?
Usually not. Permitted development generally allows rooflights that project no more than 150mm above the existing roof plane and do not sit above the ridge. A rooflight-only conversion that stays inside that normally avoids an application. Add a rear dormer and you are in different territory. Building Regulations apply either way, including Part L insulation and Part B escape from a habitable loft room.
How do I know if my roof is plain tile or interlocking?
Plain tiles are small and flat, laid in overlapping courses, so the roof reads as a fine grid from the ground. Interlocking tiles are larger, usually with a visible roll or rib. It matters because the flashing kit differs. A photograph from the pavement is normally enough for us to tell you.
There is a valley near where I want the rooflight. Is that a problem?
It is a reason to place the unit carefully rather than a reason not to fit one. A valley is the lowest line on the roof and carries the most water, so a rooflight has to sit a sensible distance clear of it or the two flashing details start to compete and that corner leaks first. On these semis the valleys come from rear additions and outriggers tied into the hipped roof. We map them at survey and keep the window clear. We will also tell you if the valley lining itself looks tired, though we do not carry out repairs. Better to know at survey than to find it the winter after a new window has gone in nearby.
Our loft room would face west. Will it get too hot?
It can, so we specify for the aspect rather than fitting the same glass to every slope. A west or south-facing plane picks up direct sun and a small loft room heats quickly, so solar-control glazing and an opening vent are worth having. A north or east-facing plane gives steady, glare-free daylight and little heat, where a clear high-performance unit makes more of a dull sky. On a hipped roof the usable rear plane is smaller than it looks, so getting the aspect and the glazing right matters more than the raw size of the window.
Thinking about this job? We survey across Ipswich, Suffolk and north Essex and give you a fixed price before any work starts, with a 10-year workmanship guarantee.