Rooflight and Skylight Installation in West Chiltington

What tile hanging is

Worth describing properly, because it is repeatedly mistaken for masonry from a distance.

Tile hanging is a weatherproof cladding of clay tiles hung on battens fixed to a timber framework or to a wall face, covering an elevation from a course above the ground to the eaves. On the better examples the tiles are shaped, with fishscale or club courses forming bands.

It is a facing rather than a structure. Behind it there is a batten, a counter batten, sometimes a felt, and then whatever the wall actually is, which on an older building here is frequently timber frame with infill.

Why it matters to a rooflight job

Because a scaffold has to be tied to something, and hung tile is not that something.

A tie driven through hung tile as if it were brickwork does three things: it cracks the tile it passes through, it breaks the batten behind, and it loads a fixing into a wall that may not be masonry at all. The damage runs, because the tiles above depend on the ones below.

Which is why ties on a tile hung elevation go into openings, into masonry bands where they exist, or into a purpose made arrangement rather than into the face. Where none of those is available, the scaffold is designed differently rather than tied anyway.

Where hanging meets a roof slope

The junction that matters when a rooflight goes into a slope above a tile hung wall.

At the eaves the hanging stops and the roof begins, and the detail between them was formed when the building was clad. It is frequently a tilting fillet, a course of undercloak and a run of tile that has to be lifted to reach anything.

Working near it means understanding that reinstating the hanging is a separate skill from reinstating a roof, and that the two courses either side of the junction are the ones most likely to break. Both are allowed for rather than discovered.

Hanging on a dormer cheek

A frequent local arrangement and it comes up whenever a dormer is involved.

Dormers here are commonly tile hung on their cheeks, which puts a small area of hanging in an awkward, exposed position with complicated junctions on three sides.

Those are the parts of a roof most likely to be at the end of their life, and where a rooflight is going into the same slope it is worth looking at them while the scaffold is up. It is rarely more than half a day of extra work at that point and a full job later.

Matching hung tile

The same discipline as matching a roof covering, and rather more visible.

Hung tile is on an elevation at eye level rather than on a slope seen at an angle, so a mismatched replacement reads immediately. Shaped courses are harder again, because a fishscale or club tile has to match in profile as well as colour.

Tiles removed are set aside and reinstated, and anything broken is made up from the least visible elevation rather than from a pallet.

What the West Chiltington stock asks for

Three other conditions apply here and each is set out in full elsewhere.

Timber frames under the older roofs, 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. Lath and plaster ceilings are on West Tarring.

All three are established at survey and none of them is what makes a job here distinctive.

Thatch, where it survives

A few roofs here still carry it and it is worth saying plainly what that means.

A rooflight in thatch is not something we offer. The covering is a different craft, the fire considerations are their own subject, and no unit is designed to weather into it properly.

Where a thatched property has a later tiled addition, that is a different question and it is frequently the answer. It is assessed on its own terms.

The old village and the common

The settlement shape, and it is unusual enough to affect how work is organised.

There is a compact old village around the church, and then a large area of scattered development across the common, laid out on winding lanes with houses set well back in wooded plots.

Which means two quite different access problems within one parish: tight lanes and no room in the village, and long private drives with plenty of room but a difficult approach on the common.

Access on the common

The practical constraint on the scattered half.

Lanes are narrow, unlit, frequently unadopted, and heavily wooded overhead. A scaffold lorry or a lorry with a made to size unit is limited by branch height as much as by width.

It is checked by driving the route rather than looking at a map, and where the approach is genuinely restricted that appears as its own line in the price rather than as a surprise on the day.

Trees, and what they cost in daylight

The other consequence of a wooded common, and it is the one customers care about.

A rooflight under a mature canopy delivers considerably less than the same unit in the open, and in summer, when the room is most used, the difference is at its widest.

Where a slope is heavily overshadowed we will say so and suggest a different slope, a larger unit, or in some cases that the money is better spent elsewhere.

Hanging over a rooflight reveal

A detail that arises where a dormer or a gable cheek is clad and a unit goes in beside it.

The reveal formed inside a rooflight opening is plasterwork, and the cladding outside it is a separate weathering layer with a cavity behind. The two have to be tied together thermally without bridging the cavity or trapping moisture in it.

It is a detail that is easy to do badly and invisible once done, which is exactly the kind we prefer to think about beforehand.

What we are usually replacing here

Rarely a failed unit.

It is generally a standard flanged rooflight fitted decades ago, standing proud of a hand made tile slope on a building where nothing else stands proud of anything. On a village of this character it reads from a considerable distance.

Replacing one with a slim flush unit is welcomed rather than resisted by a conservation officer, because the outcome improves on what is there. It is among the easier applications we make.

The designation, and what it protects

A conservation area over the old village, with a good number of listed buildings inside it.

What it is protecting here is a particular character: hung tile elevations, clay tile roofs, and a small grain of building. A standard flanged unit on a visible slope is out of keeping with all three.

How designation narrows permitted development is on article 2(3) land and permitted development.

Listed buildings

Common in the old village, and consent is required for any roof alteration regardless of visibility.

What actually helps such an application is set out on the Arundel page, where listed building consent is the everyday condition rather than an occasional one.

What is specific here is the hanging: a proposal that requires disturbing an original tile hung elevation to erect a scaffold is a materially different proposition from one that does not, and it is worth resolving the access before the application rather than after.

The houses on the common

A quite different building stock: twentieth century, frequently arts and crafts influenced, on generous wooded plots.

Cut roofs, clay tile, tile hanging used decoratively rather than structurally, and lofts that are frequently worth converting. Very little of it is designated.

Which makes it the easier half of the parish to work in on every count except getting a lorry down the lane.

Arts and crafts detail on the common

Worth recognising, because it changes what looks right rather than what is required.

A good number of the twentieth century houses out on the common were built with real care: swept valleys, deep eaves, banded hanging, and roofs designed as a composition rather than as a covering.

None of that is protected and all of it is worth respecting. A slim unit set square to the coursing on a house like that costs no more than one set carelessly, and the difference is visible for as long as the house stands.

Wealden shelter

The environmental position, and it is comfortable.

Well inland with the Downs between the village 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 the woodland does contribute is leaf litter, which on a flat roof or in a valley gutter is a maintenance item rather than a specification one.

Leaf litter, and a flat roof under trees

Worth raising before rather than after on a wooded plot.

Litter around a kerb holds water against it, and on a deck with a shallow fall that is how a sound detail becomes a wet one over several autumns. Outlets block for the same reason.

A clear at the end of each autumn deals with it entirely. It is a short job that nobody does unless somebody mentions it.

What the survey establishes

• Whether any elevation is tile hung, and where a scaffold can be tied.
• The condition of the junction where hanging meets the roof.
• Whether the building is listed, including by curtilage.
• The approach to the property, including branch height on the lanes.
• What canopy overhangs the slope in question.
• Whether any part of the roof is thatched.

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 the common, outside the designation, most rooflight work falls within permitted development subject to the projection limit above the plane of the roof and nothing forward of the principal elevation.

In the old village those rights are narrowed, and on a listed building the question does not arise because consent is needed regardless. Which applies to a specific address is established before a unit 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.