The workmanship on every Sunspire installation carries a ten-year guarantee. It stands behind the part of the job that disappears the moment the glass goes in: the upstand, the falls in the roof around it, the laps in the flashing and the point where the covering terminates. The unit itself is covered separately, by the manufacturer that built it, and the two documents overlap far less than people assume.
Two documents, two different jobs
The manufacturer stands behind what came out of its factory: the frame, the sealed glazing unit, the actuator and controls on an electric opener. Sunspire stands behind the way that unit was set into your roof.
The split follows the failure modes. A sealed unit that mists between the panes has lost its edge seal, and the product warranty answers it. Water showing at the internal reveal after a night of driven rain is almost never the unit. It is the perimeter, and the perimeter is workmanship.
| What has actually happened | Which cover answers it |
|---|---|
| Misting inside the sealed unit, between the panes | Manufacturer’s product warranty |
| An actuator or control on an electric unit stops responding | Manufacturer’s product warranty |
| A wet mark at the internal reveal after heavy rain | Sunspire workmanship guarantee |
| Covering lifting where it was dressed up the kerb | Sunspire workmanship guarantee |
| Flashing lapped in the wrong order | Sunspire workmanship guarantee |
What workmanship means on a rooflight specifically
Workmanship is everything decided on the roof rather than in a factory. Trimming the opening so the load has somewhere to go. Building the kerb to height and square. Dressing the covering up the sides of that kerb and terminating it where it belongs. Setting the unit onto its bed and fixing it to the manufacturer’s pattern rather than to habit. Lapping the flashing in sequence, so every joint sheds onto the one below it.
None of that is visible at handover. A rooflight looks identical from the kitchen whether the upstand is one hundred and fifty millimetres or ninety, and whether the soakers run over or under the course above. That invisibility is the argument for a long guarantee: the buyer cannot inspect this work, so the installer carries it.
The four details the cover is written around
- Upstand height. The distance from the finished roof surface to the top of the kerb, which is what stands between the glass and water lying on the roof.
- Fall. Whether the roof around the opening drains, or whether water sits against the kerb for two days after rain and works at every joint it can reach.
- Flashing laps. The order and the overlap of each piece, either working with gravity or quietly against it.
- Termination of the covering. Where the membrane, tile or slate stops, how it is held there, and whether wind can get under the edge and lift it.
Get those four right and a rooflight is undramatic for decades. Leave one marginal and the roof will find it, usually in the third or fourth winter.
Where the manufacturer’s warranty begins
The unit fitted to your roof arrives with its own warranty document from VELUX, Fakro, Keylite, Roto or whichever manufacturer supplied it. Terms and lengths vary by manufacturer and by product, and glass, frame, coatings and electrical components are often covered for different periods within the same document.
That paperwork is handed over at completion with the rest of the job file. Keep it with the house papers: a warranty question five years out is far simpler to settle when the exact product is written down somewhere.
Why the term runs to ten years
A marginal perimeter detail declares itself slowly. Water only finds a weak lap when a particular set of conditions arrives together: wind from the wrong quarter, sustained rain rather than a shower, and a drainage path partly closed by leaves. That combination might be eighteen months away. It might be six years.
A two-year guarantee expires long before the roof has finished testing the work: a comfortable promise for the installer and a thin one for the customer. Ten years covers the window in which a genuine detailing error will show itself.
What is handed over at completion
The guarantee document records the property, the date of completion, the unit installed and the work carried out around it. It goes over with the manufacturer’s warranty paperwork and the Building Control notification, which Sunspire arranges as part of the job.
Whether the guarantee passes to a subsequent owner of the property is [to be confirmed]. Worth asking before you accept a quote if a sale is anywhere in your thinking, because a buyer’s solicitor will ask about the rooflight.
How to raise something under it
The route is email, to info@sunspireskylightschelmsford.co.uk. Useful things to say: the address, roughly when the work was done, what you are seeing, and above all when you see it. Weather and direction are diagnostic. Water that appears only with wind from the south west points somewhere quite different from water that shows in cold still weather, which is usually surface condensation.
A photograph of the ceiling where the mark shows is more useful than one of the roof. The first step from our side is a look at the installation, and what follows is agreed in writing before work starts. The same route covers a replacement unit set into an existing kerb.
Tell us about your roof
We start with the building, the covering and the slope. Then we tell you what will suit it, and what it will cost, as a fixed written number.
- Surveyed before it is priced
- 10-year workmanship guarantee
- Building Control notification handled
- New installations and replacements