About Sunspire Skylights

Sunspire Skylights Chelmsford fits rooflights, roof lanterns, roof windows and sun tunnels into domestic roofs, and replaces units that have reached the end of their working life. That is the whole trade: forming an opening in a weatherproof surface, then closing it again around glass so that it stays closed. This page covers who does that work, where it is done, and the argument for doing only this.

Fifteen years spent on one problem

Fifteen years in the trade is the figure. The useful part of it is not the length, it is the narrowness. Fifteen years spread across roofing, glazing, extensions and general building produces a competent generalist. Fifteen years spent almost entirely on roof openings produces something else: a fairly complete map of the ways one can go wrong.

That map is mostly made of edge cases. A truss where the drawing showed a rafter. A concrete tile laid to a gauge that puts the head flashing exactly where a course break falls. A flat roof whose fall runs towards the proposed kerb rather than away from it. Recognising those at survey stage is the difference between a design that changes on paper and an afternoon spent improvising three metres up.

Why the glass is the straightforward half

A sealed unit is an industrial product. VELUX, Fakro, Keylite and Roto all build to a published specification, and within a given specification they perform closely enough that the choice between them turns on available sizes, method of operation and frame finish rather than on whether the glass will hold up.

What is not industrial is the two or three hundred millimetres of roof immediately around the unit. That is built by hand, on site, in whatever weather the day supplies, on a structure somebody else put up to a standard nobody wrote down. It is the variable in the equation. It is also why a careful installation and a careless one can look identical on handover day and behave completely differently in the fifth winter.

Four things at that edge decide the outcome. The height of the upstand. The fall of the roof approaching it. The laps in the flashing. The point at which the roof covering terminates. All four are buried by the time the scaffold comes down, and none of them can be inspected afterwards without taking something apart.

The argument for a specialist

A rooflight sits on a boundary between trades. It is partly carpentry, because timber gets cut and load gets moved. Partly roofing, because a covering has to be taken back and made good. Partly glazing, because the unit has to satisfy Building Regulations thermally. And partly plastering, because the reveal is the part anyone actually looks at.

Trades that meet at a boundary tend to leave a gap there. An opening gets formed to suit the structure rather than the unit that will land in it. A covering gets dressed to a kerb built by somebody who was not thinking about how the membrane would terminate. Nobody is negligent, and the outcome is still a detail that nobody owned.

Running the whole sequence with one trade removes the boundary. The opening is set out from the unit’s actual external dimensions, the kerb is built knowing how the covering will finish on it, and the reveal is planned before the ceiling goes back.

Thirty miles by road, and why it is measured that way

The working area is Chelmsford and thirty miles from it, measured as a vehicle drives rather than as a compass draws. That distinction matters in Essex, where the estuary geography means two towns twelve miles apart in a straight line can be forty minutes apart on tarmac.

In practice the radius takes in Braintree, Witham, Maldon and the Blackwater villages, Brentwood, Basildon, Canvey, Harlow, Great Dunmow, Saffron Walden and the edge of Colchester. It crosses into Hertfordshire around Sawbridgeworth, touches Suffolk above Sudbury, and reaches the London fringe at Epping.

The county changes the job more than the brochure does

Essex housing stock is unusually varied for one county, and the roof narrows the options long before anyone opens a catalogue.

Victorian brick terraces in Chelmsford and Colchester carry slate or plain clay tile over cut roofs, which are forgiving to trim. Interwar semis across the commuter towns run hipped concrete tile, where the hip lines constrain where an opening can sit. The planned estates at Great Notley, South Woodham Ferrers and Beaulieu Park are trussed almost without exception, which caps the width of a roof window unless an engineer designs the trimming. Harlow and Basildon are full of flat roofs from the new town programme, and timber frame in Thaxted and Saffron Walden brings listed building consent into the conversation.

A quotation written without knowing which of those the house is comes out of a spreadsheet rather than off a roof. The town pages go into the local stock in more detail.

How a job actually runs

The sequence is consistent enough to describe in advance. An email with a few details produces a range. A survey turns that range into a fixed written price with the unit named and the structural work stated. Materials are ordered against measured dimensions rather than assumed ones, which matters because standard rooflight sizes and standard opening sizes are not the same thing.

On site the room below is protected first and the reveal is finished last, with the roof closed and watertight at the end of every working day, whatever the forecast has decided to do. The Building Control notification is handled as part of the job rather than left with the customer.

Two figures, and why there are two

Sunspire gives a range by email once the basics are known, then a fixed written figure after a survey. Two numbers rather than one is deliberate. A single figure quoted from a photograph is either padded to cover what has not been seen, or it is optimistic and gets revised on the day.

The range exists so that a project can be sized early, when the decision is still whether to do the work at all. The fixed price exists so that the number agreed is the number invoiced. What moves between them is set out on the pricing page.

What the ten year guarantee sits on

The workmanship carries a ten year guarantee. It is placed there rather than on the glass because the glass already has a manufacturer behind it, and because the perimeter is where installations actually go wrong.

Putting a decade against the detailing is a straightforward commitment: the upstand height, the falls, the laps and the terminations were built to stand that long, and if they do not, they get put right. It also disciplines the work at the point where nobody is watching, which is the only place discipline counts.

Where to read further

The installation pages cover each product in depth, from roof lanterns to roof windows. The guides work through the technical decisions one at a time.