Get a Quote

Quoting happens in two stages. A range comes back by email once the basics are known, and a fixed written price follows a survey. This page covers what to send for the first, and what changes at the second.

Everything goes to info@sunspireskylightschelmsford.co.uk.

Four details that make a first figure useful

Send these four and the range that comes back will be narrow enough to plan around.

• Which town. Access, parking and travel differ across the county, and so does the housing stock. A Victorian terrace in central Chelmsford and a trussed estate house at Beaulieu Park are different jobs from the start.
• What the roof is covered in. Plain clay tile, concrete interlocking tile, slate, pantile, felt, single ply or GRP. The covering decides the flashing detail and much of the labour.
• Roughly which way the slope faces. North, south, east or west, or flat. This drives the glazing specification more than any other single input, because a south facing plane in July needs solar control that a north facing one does not.
• The approximate room size. Length by width in metres is enough. Glazing area is normally set against floor area, so the room sizes the rooflight rather than the other way round.

Add one line if you know it: new opening, or a unit into an existing kerb. Those are different pieces of work.

The two photographs that do most of the work

Photographs answer questions that descriptions cannot, and two are usually enough.

The first is the roof from outside. Stand back far enough that the whole plane is in frame with the walls it sits on and anything near it: a chimney, a valley, a hip, a soil vent. Pitch, covering, condition and obstructions all read off that one image.

The second is the ceiling from inside, taken from the doorway so the proportions are visible. That shows where the light is wanted and what the ceiling line is doing: flat soffit, vaulted, or a boxed section hiding something.

If there is a loft above the ceiling, a third photograph from the hatch is worth taking. Rafter or truss is the most consequential thing to establish early, and it reads off that image in seconds.

What comes back

The reply is a range, with the assumptions it rests on written out. Those assumptions are the useful part: a range that assumes a cut rafter roof, a sound covering and access from the garden tells you which findings would move the number.

Where a photograph raises something material, that comes back too. A truss visible in the loft, or a pitch that looks below the minimum for the unit you had in mind, is better raised now than discovered later. The pricing page sets out what moves a figure in either direction.

The survey

The survey turns a range into a price, and it is done at the property. It covers the covering and its condition, the pitch measured rather than guessed, the structure underneath, the internal ceiling line and where a reveal would land, the orientation, and how materials get up and waste comes down. It takes half an hour to ninety minutes.

The fixed written price

What follows the survey is a fixed itemised figure. It names the unit: manufacturer, model, external dimensions, glazing specification with its U-value, and frame finish. It states what structural work is included and whether an engineer’s calculation is needed. It confirms who forms the opening and who makes the plaster good. It includes the Building Control notification, and it puts a figure against access and waste.

Fixed means fixed: the number agreed is the number invoiced.

If the project is still a drawing

Design stage is the cheapest time to get these decisions right. Send the roof plan and a section through the proposed build-up, and what comes back is a specification rather than a price: workable unit sizes against the structural opening, the kerb height the roof needs, and the glazing call for that orientation. Pricing follows once the drawings settle.