Rooflight and Skylight Installation in Sullington

What we install in Sullington

Conservation rooflights, on domestic buildings and on farm buildings alike.

The domestic work is what it is anywhere in a downland parish: careful units on old roofs within a designation. The agricultural work is the part that is genuinely different, and it is worth setting out because very little is written about it.

A working farm building is not a house

The distinction that governs everything, and it runs deeper than the obvious.

A building in agricultural use is not a dwelling. Different regulations apply to it, different considerations govern what it needs, and the reason somebody wants daylight in it is usually operational rather than domestic.

Which means the specification starts from what the building is for. Daylight for stock, for handling, for a workshop or for storage are different requirements with different answers, and a domestic rooflight is frequently not the right product.

Listing applies either way

The point that surprises people most, and it is worth being unambiguous.

A building being in agricultural use has no bearing on whether it is listed. A working barn can be listed in its own right or by curtilage, and altering its roof needs consent exactly as a house would.

That is frequently news to somebody who has repaired the same roof for thirty years without anybody asking. Repair is one thing; forming a new opening is another, and the two are treated differently.

What is repair and what is alteration

The distinction that decides whether consent is needed, and it is worth understanding.

Replacing like for like, in the same material, in the same position, is generally repair. Forming a new opening, changing a covering type, or introducing a new element is alteration.

A rooflight where none was is alteration by any reading. Replacing a rooflight sheet that has been in a roof since the 1960s is a considerably more arguable case, and it is worth establishing which situation a building is actually in before assuming the harder one.

Rooflight sheets in a working roof

The product nobody writes about and the one most of these buildings actually have.

Agricultural roofs are commonly covered in profiled sheet with translucent panels in the same profile substituted at intervals. It is cheap, it works, and it is what a working building generally wants.

Those panels degrade: they yellow, they craze, and they eventually become brittle enough to be a hazard to anybody working on the roof. Replacing them is a genuine job and it is not a domestic rooflight job.

Fragile roof surfaces

The safety consideration on any agricultural roof, and it decides how the work is done.

Old translucent sheets and cement based sheets are fragile, and a fall through a roof is one of the most common serious accidents in this kind of work. Nothing is walked on and access is from below or on staging that spans the members.

That is not caution for its own sake. It changes what the work costs and how long it takes, and it is priced honestly rather than by assuming somebody will take a chance.

Where a unit goes in a farm roof

Decided by the frame, and the frames here are wide and irregular.

Historic barn roofs are carried on a small number of substantial trusses at wide centres. Modern agricultural buildings are portal framed at wide spacing with purlins between.

Both give large bays and both make the members immovable. The bay layout is established from inside before a position is discussed, and on a listed barn the members are historic fabric as well as structural.

The tithe barn, and buildings of that order

The parish has one of the great barns of the county, and it sets a context for everything near it.

Buildings of that significance are assessed on their own terms and on their setting, and a proposal affecting either is a specialist matter rather than an ordinary application.

What helps a listed application generally is on the Arundel page. On a building of the first rank the answer is frequently that the right proposal is a smaller one than somebody hoped.

The National Park is the planning authority

The administrative point, and it applies across the parish.

For planning purposes the authority is the South Downs National Park Authority, not the district council, and its remit includes landscape and scenic beauty as well as settlement character.

In a parish that is mostly open farmland below the scarp, that remit is engaged by almost anything. The detail is on who is the planning authority in the South Downs National Park.

Buildings seen across open ground

The visibility condition here, and it is different from a village street.

A farmstead in open country is seen from a distance, from footpaths and from the scarp above, and it reads as a group of forms in a landscape rather than as a frontage.

Which means the number and arrangement of openings matters more than their individual appearance. Several units scattered across a large slope break the plane that makes the building read; two set to the bay rhythm do not.

What the Sullington stock asks for

Three conditions apply across the older stock and each is set out elsewhere.

Timber frames are on the Steyning page. Hand made clay tile is on Sussex clay peg tile. Horsham stone, which appears on the better roofs here, is on Horsham stone slab roofs.

Each is established at survey and none is peculiar to this parish.

Flint on the domestic buildings

Present on the cottages and the walls, and it decides where a scaffold ties.

What flint is, why it takes no fixing and where a tie can legitimately go is on the Poynings page, where it is the dominant condition.

On a listed building here a fixing into an elevation forms part of the consent rather than being incidental to it.

Daylight in a livestock building

A requirement quite unlike a domestic one, and it is worth setting out because it is the reason for a good share of the agricultural work here.

Stock buildings need daylight for the animals and for the people working in them, and the standard is about even distribution across a floor rather than a bright spot under an opening. Scattered translucent panels do that better than one large unit would.

Which means the answer in a livestock building is generally more openings, smaller, spread along the roof, and it is the opposite of what a domestic instinct suggests.

Ventilation, and why it comes first

The consideration that outranks daylight in any building holding animals.

Stock produce a great deal of moisture and warmth, and a building that does not ventilate properly develops condensation on every cold surface, which is a health problem for the animals long before it is a fabric problem.

Adding a sealed rooflight to a roof that was ventilating through its ridge or its sheeting laps can reduce that airflow. It is checked before anything is specified, because the ventilation strategy of a stock building is not something to alter accidentally.

Bats and nesting birds

A genuine consideration on any old farm building, and the position is set out on the Thakeham page.

What is specific here is that a good number of these buildings are still in use, which does not exempt them. A working barn with a roost is a working barn with a roost, and the survey and the season apply the same way.

Sheltered under the scarp

The environmental position, and it is comfortable in one respect.

Well inland with the Downs between the parish and the coast, so the salt question does not arise and standard architectural coatings hold up over a normal service life.

What an exposed farmstead does get is more wind than a village, because there is nothing around it. The fixing schedule is judged at the building rather than for the parish.

Working around a farming calendar

The scheduling constraint here, and it is more particular than access alone.

A building in use is in use. A grain store is unavailable at harvest and afterwards, a lambing shed is unavailable in spring, and a stock building cannot simply be emptied for a week because a roofer is available.

Which means the date is set by the farm rather than by us, and it is agreed early. The general point about tracks, gates and seasonal surfaces is on the Thakeham page.

The Warren, and the open parish

A note on what surrounds the buildings here.

Sullington Warren and the open ground around it are managed landscape with public access, and much of the parish is farmland with footpaths across it rather than enclosed private land.

Which means a farmstead here is genuinely on view from public routes in a way an enclosed yard elsewhere is not, and the arrangement of openings on a large roof is worth thinking about for that reason as much as for any planning one.

Machinery, and what is under the roof

A practical point that decides how a day runs in a working building.

Forming an opening drops debris, and what is below it may be a tractor, a feed store, stacked bales or a milking parlour. None of those can simply be sheeted and left.

What is underneath, whether it can be moved, and what has to be protected are all agreed before the date rather than on the morning. On a working building that is as much of the planning as the roof itself.

What the survey establishes

• Whether the building is in agricultural use or is a dwelling.
• Whether it is listed, including by curtilage.
• Whether the proposal is repair or alteration.
• Whether the roof surface is fragile, and how it will be accessed.
• The bay layout, and whether members are historic fabric.
• Whether a bat or nesting survey is needed before work is planned.

Building Control

A replacement into an existing opening is not normally notifiable, though the unit still has to meet the limiting thermal standard. A new opening is, and goes to the South Downs National Park Authority or an approved inspector.

The thresholds are on do flat rooflights need Building Control.

Permitted development

Agricultural buildings have their own permitted development regime, quite separate from the domestic one, and it is narrower inside a National Park than outside.

On a listed building neither regime is the relevant question, because consent is needed regardless. Which of the three positions a specific building is in is established before anything is specified.

How we quote

A free indicative range by email from photographs, then a survey, then a fixed itemised written price that does not move afterwards. Anything we misjudge at survey is ours to absorb.

What is measured at each step is on the how we price and quote page.

Guarantee

Ten years on our workmanship, on every job, limits written down. The manufacturer stands behind the unit; we stand behind the kerb, the flashing and the making good.

The terms, and the accreditations we do not claim, are on the our guarantee page.