Skylight Installation in Thurston
- 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
Thurston has taken a large share of the housing allocated around Bury St Edmunds, and the newer parts of the village are full of a roof type that behaves differently to anything older: the attic truss. If your house has a room in the roof that came with the house rather than being added later, that is what is holding it up, and it changes the rooflight conversation completely.
It is 19.6 miles north-west of Ipswich in a straight line, about thirty-five to forty minutes up the A14 and off at the Thurston or Beyton junction. A regular run for us, because this belt of villages generates a particular kind of work.
An attic truss is not a standard truss, and that is good news
A standard fink truss fills the loft with diagonal webs, which is why a normal modern loft is unusable and why you cannot cut anything in it. An attic truss is a different design. It has a clear rectangular void in the middle for the room, heavier top and bottom chords to carry that span, and its webs pushed out to the edges where the eaves storage sits.
That means the sloping ceiling in your room-in-roof is the underside of a chord that is already doing a big structural job. The clear bays between attic trusses are usable, and a rooflight sitting neatly in one of those bays is a straightforward installation. Cut across a chord and you are into engineered territory very quickly, more so than with a standard truss, because those members are carrying the floor of the room you are standing in as well as the roof above it.
So the practical rule in Thurston’s newer stock is: work with the bays. We measure the truss centres and the position of the webs at survey and mark out where the glass can land. It is usually more places than people expect, and rarely exactly where they first pointed.
Escape windows in a room in the roof
If the loft room was built as habitable space, it already has a Part B escape route, and quite often that route is an existing window. Adding a rooflight does not change that requirement, but replacing an existing escape window with something smaller absolutely does.
The clear openable area matters, and so does the position: the bottom of the opening has to be reachable from the floor rather than set so high that nobody could actually use it in an emergency. On a sloping ceiling that pins the window to a fairly specific band on the slope. If the unit you are replacing is the designated escape window, we specify like for like or better, and we say so on the quote.
Solar panels and rooflights on the same slope
A large proportion of newer housing here came with solar PV on the south-facing slope, and that is where people want the light too. The two can coexist, but the setting out has to happen before either is fixed.
PV arrays are mounted on rails fixed through the covering into the rafters or truss chords, and the array is usually laid out to fill a rectangle. Cut a rooflight into the middle of it afterwards and you are moving panels, moving rails, and dealing with an installer’s warranty on somebody else’s work. Where the array is already in place, the sensible answer is to put the rooflight beside it rather than through it, and to leave a working margin all round for the flashing and for anyone who needs to get at the array later.
Where the panels are in-roof rather than on rails, the interface is more sensitive again, because the array has its own weathering tray that the rooflight flashing has to work alongside. We survey that properly rather than guessing from the ground.
Worth checking before you order: if your house is still inside a structural warranty period, any cutting of an attic truss chord needs an engineer’s design, and the calculation should go in the house file. It is a small cost that removes a large argument later.
The jobs we do most in Thurston
Adding light to an existing room in the roof is the commonest, and that is a pitched roof skylight installation in an attic-truss bay. Second is a rear extension over a kitchen or family room, where the roof is new and the structure was designed knowing glass was going in, which makes for a clean flat roof rooflight installation or a roof lantern depending on ceiling height.
Third, and increasing, is replacing units in houses that are now fifteen or twenty years old where the original builder specified the cheapest available window. Those are worth upgrading on thermal performance alone, and there are numbers on energy efficient skylight installation.
On a high sloping ceiling in a room in the roof, an electric opening skylight with a rain sensor solves the problem that most manually operated units in these rooms are simply out of reach and stay shut all summer.
The older village underneath the growth
Thurston reads as a new-build village now, but there is an older core beneath the expansion, around the church and the station, with period cottages and pre-war houses on hand-cut roofs. That stock behaves nothing like the attic-truss estates. The rafters are loose solid timber with no metal plates, an opening is trimmed the traditional way, and the constraint is the covering and the old carpentry rather than an engineer’s calculation on a chord. A few of the oldest buildings carry enough age to need the listing checked before anything is ordered.
Telling the two apart is quick from the loft hatch. Heavy loose rafters and purlins with no plates is a cut roof from the old village. A dense frame of diagonal timbers joined with flat metal nail plates, or the clear rectangular room-in-roof void of an attic truss, is modern estate construction. We confirm which you have on the first visit, because the method, the price and the paperwork all follow from it and pricing a period cottage like a new-build gets both wrong.
What the survey checks in a new Thurston house
On the newer stock the survey is mostly about what else is sharing the roof. Modern houses here are often built with mechanical ventilation, so there are ducts running through the loft that a rooflight opening has to miss, along with the usual soil vents and any solar cabling. We map those before marking out. We record the truss type and centres, confirm whether it is a standard or an attic truss, and check whether the covering sits on a breathable membrane rather than felt, because the membrane changes the underlay collar detail around the unit.
The paperwork gets checked at the same time. A lot of these houses are still inside a structural warranty period, so if any part of a truss has to be cut the engineer’s calculation belongs in the house file. Some developments also carry a design code or covenant from the original planning permission that can restrict roof alterations more tightly than planning law does. Access, by contrast, is rarely an issue on the estates, with driveways and open frontages making scaffold and delivery simple, which is one of the few things easier here than in the market towns.
Getting a price in Thurston
Every job is surveyed in the roof space as well as on the roof, then priced once in writing. Ten-year workmanship guarantee, installed to current Building Regulations, fitted by installers with 25 years in the trade.
We cover the same expanding villages at Elmswell and Ixworth, and into Bury St Edmunds. The full list is on areas we cover.
Request a fixed quote for Thurston. Tell us whether the loft room came with the house or was added later, and whether there are solar panels on that slope. Both change the answer.
My Thurston house has a room in the roof already. Is fitting another rooflight easy?
Usually yes, if it goes in a clear bay between attic trusses. Those bays are wider than the gaps in a standard trussed roof and were designed around the room, so a properly sized unit often drops in with no structural work. What you cannot do casually is cut a truss chord, because in an attic truss those members carry the floor of the room as well as the roof. That needs an engineer’s design.
Can I have a rooflight on a slope that already has solar panels?
Yes, beside the array rather than through it. Panels are laid out to fill a rectangle on rails fixed into the structure, so cutting an opening in the middle means relocating panels and rails and dealing with the PV installer’s warranty. We survey the array position and set the rooflight out with a working margin around the flashing, which also keeps access for anyone maintaining the panels later.
Does a new rooflight in my loft room have to be an escape window?
Not necessarily, if the room already has a compliant escape route. What matters is that you do not remove or downgrade the existing one. If the window you are replacing is the designated Part B escape, the replacement has to give at least the same clear openable area and sit in a position that is genuinely reachable from the floor. We check which window is doing that job before quoting.
The original windows in our loft room feel cold. Is replacing them worth it?
Often, particularly on houses built fifteen or more years ago where the developer fitted the cheapest compliant unit at the time. A modern unit with a thermally broken frame and a warm-edge spacer performs substantially better than an early double-glazed roof window, and in a room in the roof, where the glass is a big share of the external surface, you notice it. Replacement is what we do; we fit new units rather than working on old ones.
We are in an older cottage in Thurston, not a new-build. Does the truss advice still apply?
No, and it is worth knowing which you have. The attic-truss and standard-truss guidance is for the modern estates. The older houses around the church and station have hand-cut roofs of loose solid timber with no metal plates, where an opening is trimmed the traditional way around the rafters. The constraint there is the covering and the old carpentry, and on the oldest buildings the listing position. A look through the loft hatch settles it: plated diagonal timbers mean a truss, loose heavy rafters mean a cut roof.
Our new house has mechanical ventilation. Does that get in the way of a rooflight?
It can, which is why we survey the loft before marking anything out. Modern houses here often run ventilation ducting through the roof space alongside soil vents and solar cabling, and a rooflight opening has to clear all of it. Usually the answer is to set the unit a bay along so it misses the ducts rather than moving services, which is more disruptive and more expensive. We map what is up there at survey and place the opening in a clear bay that works around it.
Will a rooflight beside our solar panels reduce their output?
Not if it is set out sensibly. A rooflight fitted in the clear roof beside the array, with a working margin around it, does not shade the panels through the day, so their output is unaffected. What causes losses is casting a shadow across the array, so we keep the unit clear of the panels’ path and avoid raising anything proud enough to throw shade onto them. We set the position out at survey with the array layout in front of us rather than guessing from the ground.
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.