Rooflight and Skylight Installation in East Worthing

What we install in East Worthing

Replacements into existing openings, and flat roof rooflights over rear additions.

The replacements are because these houses have been altered repeatedly over a century, and a good proportion have a rooflight somewhere that has reached the end of its life.

The flat roof units are because the ground floor rear room, at the back of a narrow terrace with a yard wall a few feet away, gets almost no daylight from the side. Light from above is the only light available.

The outrigger, and why it is dark

The defining plan feature here and it is worth understanding before proposing anything.

A Victorian terrace has a main body two rooms deep and a narrower addition running back from it, usually two storeys, with a yard alongside. The ground floor of that addition is the kitchen in most of these houses.

It has a wall on one side, a neighbour’s addition a couple of metres away on the other, and a window at the end looking at a fence. Even at midday in June it is a dim room, and no amount of decorating changes that.

Side infills, and the deck they create

The commonest alteration on these houses and it produces the commonest rooflight job.

Filling in the yard alongside the outrigger widens the kitchen and creates a flat deck between the addition and the boundary wall. It also removes the last side window the room had.

Which is why almost every side infill here ends up wanting a rooflight, and why the ones done without one are the rooms we are called to fix.

The kerb on an infill

Where the flat roof job is actually decided.

These decks are usually narrow, built between two existing walls, and the upstand around a rooflight opening was formed from whatever suited at the time. Height, square and insulation are all in question until somebody measures.

What that means in practice is on the kerb decides the job.

Falls on a narrow deck

A specific problem on an infill between two walls.

A deck a metre and a half wide with a wall on both sides has nowhere obvious to drain to, and several of these were built with almost no fall at all. Water sits, and a kerb standing in standing water is a maintenance problem waiting to happen.

Where the fall is inadequate we say so before fitting rather than after, because a good unit on a ponding deck is work that comes back.

Party walls

The consideration that terraces bring and detached houses do not.

Work close to or on a shared wall, including cutting into it or fixing a kerb against it, can bring the party wall procedure into play. Whether it does depends on what is actually being done.

It is raised at survey rather than after the notice period would have started, because the timescale attached to it is measured in weeks and it is nobody’s idea of a pleasant surprise.

Slate on the main roof

The covering across most of these streets, on cut roofs with purlins.

Slate is brittle, nailed rather than hung, and does not take being walked on, so opening one means scaffold rather than working off the covering, and matching salvaged slate rather than new.

What a roof window asks of a slate roof is on roof windows on a slate roof.

Clay plain tile on the later stock

Mixed in among the slate, particularly on the Edwardian houses and on additions rebuilt since.

Plain tile is more forgiving than slate: it can be lifted and relaid, it takes a soaker detail readily, and breakage is easier to make up. Where a house has slate at the front and tile at the back, the back is the easier proposition by some margin.

Which covering is where gets established at survey, because from the street only the front is visible.

Salt, on a dense street

East Worthing runs back from the seafront, so exposure varies street by street.

The southern end takes salt directly. Further back, the density of the terraces themselves provides shelter, and standard coatings hold up. Marine grade is advisable near the front and unnecessary at the north end.

The survey looks at what stands between the plot and the sea rather than at the postcode, and we will specify inland where inland is right.

Access, which is the hard part

The single largest variable in a price here.

A mid terrace has no side access at all. The rear is reached through the house or through a neighbour, the front is highway, and there is nowhere to park a lorry for long.

Which means a scaffold is a licence, a date and a negotiation before it is a cost. It is settled at survey and it appears as its own line rather than being folded into the labour.

Getting materials to the back

The consequence of the above and it decides unit sizes as much as the room does.

A made to size flat roof unit has to reach a rear deck through a hallway and a kitchen, or over a roof. There is a size beyond which that stops being possible, and it is measured with a tape rather than estimated.

Two smaller units are frequently the right answer here for exactly that reason, and they light a long narrow kitchen better than one large one anyway.

Neighbours, and telling them

A practical courtesy that saves trouble on a dense street.

Scaffold, deliveries and a day of noise affect the houses either side whether or not their permission is needed. Telling them in advance costs nothing and prevents most of the friction these jobs generate.

Where access across a neighbour’s land is actually required, that is agreed in writing before a date is set rather than asked for on the morning.

Ventilation in a kitchen

Worth raising because so many of these rooms are kitchens.

An opening rooflight in a flat deck is the most effective vent position a single storey room has, and in a kitchen at the back of a terrace with one small window it makes a real difference to how the room feels.

It does not replace the extract over a hob, which is a separate requirement. Electric with a rain sensor is what most households end up wanting on a deck above head height.

Condensation on the room side

The complaint that follows a kitchen installation and it is usually not a fault.

A kitchen produces a great deal of water vapour and a rooflight is the coldest surface in the room. Misting on the inside on a cold morning is condensation in the room rather than a failed unit.

Misting between the panes is a failed seal and is a different thing entirely. Which side of the glass the water is on tells you which you have.

Bin stores, meters and the route through

A small detail that decides how a day actually runs on these streets.

The passage from the front door to the back of one of these houses is frequently narrow, turns twice, and has a meter cupboard partway along it. Everything going in and every bag of debris coming out goes through it.

It is worth walking before the date is set, because it is the difference between a tidy day and an awkward one, and occasionally it is the reason a unit is made in two pieces rather than one.

Rain noise in a rear room

Worth mentioning on a narrow infill deck, because the room is small and the roof is close.

A flat deck a metre or so above head height in a kitchen carries rain noise into the room in a way a pitched roof does not, and an old plastic dome amplifies it noticeably.

A glazed unit with a decent make up is quieter than what it replaces rather than louder, which surprises people. Where noise is a stated concern, glass thickness and an asymmetric make up are worth specifying deliberately.

The yard wall, and what it blocks

A small thing that decides where the unit goes on a narrow deck.

A boundary wall running along one side of an infill casts a shadow across the deck for part of the day, and a rooflight set close against it gets less than one set a foot away.

On a deck a metre and a half wide that is not much room for manoeuvre, and it is still worth taking. The position is set from where the light actually falls rather than from the middle of the opening.

Stairwells on a three storey house

The position that works hardest on the taller houses here.

A rooflight over a stairwell lights the full height of the stair and reaches the hall at the bottom, which on a narrow terrace with no other top light changes the middle of the whole house.

It is worth proposing even where an enquiry started somewhere else, because the effect is larger than a bedroom window and the position is usually out of public view.

What the survey establishes

• Whether the outrigger roof is a flat deck, a lean-to or a pitched slope.
• The kerb on any existing deck, and which way it falls.
• Whether the covering is slate or plain tile, front and back.
• Whether party wall procedure is engaged.
• How materials will reach the back, measured rather than assumed.
• Where a scaffold can stand, and whether it is on the highway.

Building Control

A new opening is notifiable, so we notify Worthing Borough Council or an approved inspector and the completion certificate comes back to you. Keep it. It is what a solicitor asks for when the house is sold.

Where the line falls between a new opening and a replacement is on do flat rooflights need Building Control.

Permitted development

There is limited designation here, so most rear work falls within permitted development subject to the projection limit above the plane of the roof and nothing forward of the principal elevation.

A front slope facing the street is the case that is rarely appropriate whether or not it is permitted, and we will say so. Where a house has been converted to flats, the permitted development position is different again and 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.