Rooflight and Skylight Installation in Thakeham

What we install in Thakeham

Conservation rooflights and replacements, and a disproportionate share of both go into converted barns, stables, cartsheds and oasts.

Those are not domestic roofs. They were built to cover a working space, with structure designed for that and nothing else, and a conversion has generally worked around what was there rather than replacing it.

Which means almost nothing about a barn roof can be assumed from a drawing or a photograph, and the survey is longer here than anywhere.

Curtilage listing on an outbuilding

The first thing established, because it changes everything and it is invisible from outside.

A building can be listed without being named on the list, where it formed part of the curtilage of a listed building and predates 1948. On a farmstead that catches barns, stables, cartsheds, granaries and walls routinely.

The consequence is complete. On a curtilage listed building any alteration to the roof needs listed building consent, and doing it without is a criminal matter rather than a planning one.

Checking the list for an address is not sufficient. What the building is, when it was built, and what it sits behind all matter.

Where a unit can go in a barn roof

Decided by the frame rather than by the room, and the frame was laid out for a different purpose.

A barn roof is carried on a small number of substantial trusses at wide centres, with common rafters between them that are lighter and less regular than in a house. The bays between trusses are large, which is helpful, and the trusses themselves are immovable.

So there is frequently more freedom than in a house within a bay, and none at all across one. The bay layout is established from inside before any position is discussed.

Cutting a common rafter in a historic frame

Possible, and it is a decision rather than a routine.

Common rafters in an old barn are historic fabric in their own right, even where they are plainly secondary to the principals. On a listed or curtilage listed building, cutting one is part of what consent covers.

Where a unit can be sized to fit between rafters as they lie, that is a materially stronger proposal, and it is worth designing the unit around the frame rather than the other way round.

Roofs with no ceiling

A condition specific to conversions, and it changes the whole detail.

Where a barn has been converted with the structure left exposed, there is no ceiling void and no plasterboard. The insulation sits between or over the rafters, the finish is the underside of the roof itself, and the frame is on show.

A rooflight in that roof has its reveal formed in the thickness of the roof build up, and every part of the detail is visible from the room. It is joinery as much as roofing, and it is priced accordingly.

The insulation line in a conversion

The technical question that decides whether the room behaves in winter, and it varies building to building.

A conversion may have insulated over the rafters with the covering relaid above, between the rafters, below them behind a lining, or in some combination. Each puts the frame of a new rooflight in a different thermal position.

Getting that wrong produces water forming along the frame every cold morning, in a room where the frame is fully visible. It is established by opening up rather than by asking what the builder did.

Coverings patched over centuries

What is actually on a barn roof, and it is rarely one thing.

Clay tile, Horsham stone on the older and grander examples, corrugated sheet from a working period, and whatever was used to make good at each repair. It is common to find three coverings on one roof.

Horsham stone in particular changes the job entirely, and what it demands is on Horsham stone slab roofs.

Oast houses

A specific building type in this landscape and it deserves naming.

Conical or pyramidal roofs, frequently over a round or square kiln, with a structure and geometry unlike anything else. A conventional rooflight in a conical roof is a difficult proposition and frequently the wrong one.

Where daylight is wanted in an oast, the answer is usually the adjoining barn range rather than the kiln itself. We will say so rather than attempt something that will not weather.

Scale, and getting the size right

The judgement that matters most on agricultural buildings.

These are large simple roofs, and their character comes from an unbroken plane. A unit sized for a house looks small and fussy on one; several scattered across a slope destroy exactly what makes the building worth looking at.

Fewer, larger, and aligned with the bay rhythm of the frame is almost always the better answer, both visually and in an application.

Aligning with the bays

The practical version of that, and it is what an officer responds to.

A barn’s elevations are ordered by its structure: openings, buttresses and bays fall at intervals set by the frame. Rooflights placed to that rhythm read as belonging; rooflights placed to suit a room inside do not.

It costs nothing to set out a drawing that way and it is frequently the difference between an approval and a request for amendments.

What the Thakeham stock asks for

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

Timber frames and why an opening in one is a carpentry decision is on the Steyning page. Hand made clay tile and its varying gauge is on Sussex clay peg tile. What helps a listed application is on the Arundel page.

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

Permitted development on an outbuilding

A question that is less straightforward than it sounds and it comes up constantly here.

The rights that attach to a dwelling do not attach in the same way to a separate building in its garden, and a converted outbuilding may or may not be part of the dwelling for these purposes depending on how the conversion was consented.

It is established from the planning history rather than from how the building is used now, because the two are not always the same thing.

Agricultural buildings still in use

A different case again and worth separating.

A working farm building is not a dwelling, and a rooflight in one is a different proposition on every count: the regulations that apply, the specification, and frequently the product.

We do that work and we survey it entirely separately from domestic jobs. What suits a house does not suit a livestock building or a grain store.

Bats, and why we ask

A genuine consideration on an old agricultural building and it is not a formality.

Barns, stables and oasts are exactly the buildings bats use, and all British bat species and their roosts are protected by law whether or not a bat is present at the time. Disturbing a roost is an offence.

Where a building has the characteristics of a roost, the responsible course is a survey by somebody qualified before roof work is planned, and the season matters. It is not something we assess ourselves and it is something we will always raise, because the alternative is stopping work halfway through.

Owls and nesting birds

The same principle at a smaller scale, and it affects timing rather than feasibility.

Nesting birds are protected while nesting, and barn roofs in this parish carry nests as a matter of course. Work is planned around that rather than through it.

In practice it means a job in a barn is better scheduled outside the nesting season, and that is a conversation at survey rather than a discovery on the first morning.

Access on farm tracks

The practical constraint across the parish.

Long unmade tracks, gates, and surfaces that change completely between August and February. A scaffold lorry that reaches a farmstead in summer will not necessarily reach it in January.

The route is driven at survey, and where seasonal access is a factor it affects the date as much as the price. Gates are closed behind us, which on a working farm matters more than it sounds.

Space, and what it gives back

The compensation for everything above.

Farmsteads have room. A scaffold stands wherever it needs to, a lorry unloads beside the building, and there is no highway licence and no neighbour to negotiate with.

On a converted barn that is a genuine saving against the same job on a village street, and it partly offsets the longer survey and the more careful work.

Wealden shelter

The environmental position, and it is comfortable.

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. Wind loading is ordinary.

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

What the survey establishes

• Whether the building is listed, including by curtilage.
• The bay layout of the frame, and where the trusses fall.
• Where the insulation sits in the roof build up.
• Whether the structure is exposed in the room below.
• What coverings are actually on the roof, and in how many patches.
• The planning history, and what the conversion was consented as.

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 Horsham District Council or an approved inspector.

The thresholds are on do flat rooflights need Building Control.

Permitted development

On an unlisted house outside the designated village, most rooflight work falls within permitted development subject to the projection limit above the plane of the roof.

On a converted outbuilding, and on anything listed or curtilage listed, that is not the right question and consent is established first. Given how much of the parish falls into one of those categories, it is the first thing we check rather than the last.

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.