Roof Lantern Installation
Flat-roof glazing sized to the room and detailed into the kerb below it.
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South Essex
Rooflight installation in Billericay
Commuter town, interwar and modern. What that means for getting glass into a roof here is the whole of this page.
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BillericayTown covered
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30Mile radius by road
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In Billericay
What we install on Billericay roofs
Flat Roof Rooflight Installation
Flush and kerb-mounted units into single-ply, felt and GRP flat roofs.
View this service →Roof Window Installation
Roof windows trimmed into slate, clay and concrete tile without proud flashing.
View this service →VELUX Window Installation
We install VELUX alongside Fakro, Keylite and Roto roof windows.
View this service →Electric and Opening Rooflights
Actuated opening units, rain sensors and controls, wired and commissioned.
View this service →Energy Efficient Rooflights
Specified on U-value and g-value, not on the brochure photograph.
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The local detail
18 things worth knowing about Billericay roofs
Billericay is built along the top of a ridge, and that single fact shapes more of a rooflight job here than any product choice does. The High Street runs the crest at around sixty metres above sea level, the ground falls away east towards the Crouch valley and west towards Laindon, and the older plots on the northern side sit under woodland that was standing long before the houses arrived. Exposure at the top, deep shade on the wooded plots, and a conservation area through the middle of it.
Sunspire fits new rooflights and replaces units that have reached the end of their life, travelling to Billericay from Chelmsford. This page is about what the town’s roof stock actually allows, and where the local constraints bite hardest.
- 01 Norsey Road, the ridge, and the roofs sitting on top of it
- 02 Frontages inside the town centre conservation boundary
- 03 Interwar ribbon along Laindon Road and Southend Road
- 04 The postwar and later estates, and the width a truss allows
- 05 Protected trees, and the daylight Norsey Wood takes back
- 06 Coverings across the town, and why the kit is picked on site
- 07 Chalet bungalows and the dormer additions around Sunnymede
- 08 Rear extensions, and choosing between a lantern and flush glass
- 09 Wind driven rain on the top of the hill, and the upstand that answers it
- 10 Falls, outlets and the water that has to leave a Billericay flat roof
- 11 Which way a Billericay rear slope faces
- 12 Converting a Billericay loft, and the head height it leaves
- 13 The clear opening a bedroom in the roof has to give
- 14 Solar gain over a south facing Billericay garden room
- 15 London Clay under the hill, and what movement does to an opening
- 16 Getting a scaffold up a Billericay drive
- 17 Notifying the work to Basildon borough
- 18 Where a Billericay enquiry starts
Norsey Road, the ridge, and the roofs sitting on top of it
The plots running north from the High Street towards Norsey Wood carry the largest and oldest houses in the town outside the historic core. Detached, generously spaced, and built between the wars on ground that was previously woodland or common.
Their roofs are cut rather than trussed, which is the good news, and they are frequently complicated, which is the rest of it. Multiple ranges, valleys where a rear wing meets the main roof, and hipped ends that leave a smaller usable plane than the elevation suggests. On a house like that the first job of a survey is deciding which plane the glass should go into, because there are usually three candidates and only one of them faces the right way.
Frontages inside the town centre conservation boundary
The conservation area covers the High Street and the buildings immediately behind it, including the timber framed fabric that survives under later brick and render fronts. The Chantry House end of the street carries listed buildings in their own right.
Within that boundary the working assumption is that anything cut into a slope visible from the street has to read as historically plausible. That means a conservation rooflight, slim cast frame, central glazing bar, sitting flush in the plane of the tiles rather than standing proud of them. Rear slopes hidden from the public view are usually treated more generously, but that is a conversation with a planning officer rather than something to assume before ordering.
Interwar ribbon along Laindon Road and Southend Road
The town expanded outwards along its main roads through the nineteen twenties and thirties, and that ribbon of semis and small detached houses is the most workable stock in Billericay.
They were built with purlins and rafters at four hundred or six hundred centres, pitched between thirty five and forty five degrees. That geometry gives a roof window enough slope for the flashing to behave exactly as the manufacturer designed it, and it leaves a loft with genuine standing headroom under the ridge. A pair of roof windows into a rear slope of that kind is close to the simplest job this trade offers.
The postwar and later estates, and the width a truss allows
Everything built from roughly the mid nineteen sixties onwards, filling the ground between the old roads, sits under trussed rafters. Queen’s Park, the Sunnymede side, and the closes that came later are all in this category.
A truss is an engineered component with webs carrying load in tension and compression, and it does not behave like a rafter you can cut and trim around. In practice a roof window on those estates is sized to sit between trusses, which caps the clear width at somewhere near 550mm unless a structural engineer designs a trimming solution. Two narrower units in adjacent bays is often the honest answer, and it spreads the light more evenly than one wide opening would.
Measure the truss centres in the loft before settling on a size.
Protected trees, and the daylight Norsey Wood takes back
Billericay has an unusual density of tree preservation orders, particularly on the plots bordering Norsey Wood and along the roads that run up to it. Oaks and mature pines sit close to houses across the whole northern half of the town.
That matters twice. First, a scaffold cannot be built through a protected canopy and a crane cannot swing over one without agreement, so access planning starts earlier here than elsewhere. Second, a heavily shaded north or east slope under a large oak gains far less from a rooflight in July than the same unit on an open plot. Where trees dominate, the sensible move is a larger opening with neutral glass rather than a small one with solar control.
Coverings across the town, and why the kit is picked on site
The flashing kit is chosen from what is actually on the roof, not from what is convenient to carry. Billericay gives you at least four answers within a mile.
- Plain clay tile on the older fabric near the High Street, laid in double lap and hand-fitted around any opening, taking a kit with soakers dressed between courses.
- Sand faced concrete tile on the interwar ribbon, shallow profile, forgiving to work with.
- Deep profile interlocking concrete tile on the postwar estates, needing a kit built for that depth or the apron bridges the troughs.
- Single ply, felt and GRP on flat roofs and rear additions, where the membrane itself is dressed up the kerb and terminated beneath the unit.
Chalet bungalows and the dormer additions around Sunnymede
Billericay has a large stock of chalet bungalows, some built that way and many converted upwards during the nineteen eighties and nineties with a rear dormer bolted on.
They are good candidates for roof glazing because the room is already inside the roof. The detail worth watching is the depth of the build-up. Where insulation has been added between and beneath the rafters, the internal lining can be 250mm deep or more, and a square reveal at that depth throws a hard edged rectangle of light straight onto the floor. Splaying the lining outwards spreads the light across the ceiling and roughly doubles the apparent size of the opening.
Rear extensions, and choosing between a lantern and flush glass
A single storey rear extension is the commonest reason a Billericay homeowner picks up the phone. The decision that follows is whether the new roof should carry a roof lantern or a flush flat rooflight.
Width decides it more often than taste does. On a narrow side return of two and a half metres, a raised lantern makes the ceiling feel lower rather than higher, and flush glass is the better answer. On a full width rear of four metres or more, the converging bars of a lantern give the room height and direction, and above a kitchen island the effect justifies the extra structure underneath.
Wind driven rain on the top of the hill, and the upstand that answers it
A flush rooflight sits on a kerb built off the roof structure, with the covering dressed up its sides before the unit lands. The figure quoted across the trade is 150mm from the finished surface to the top of that kerb.
It is the sum of two things: the depth of water that can stand on a flat roof, and the height wind driven rain can be pushed up a vertical face. On the exposed ridge plots at the top of Billericay, where there is nothing upwind for some distance, 150mm is the floor rather than the target. On sheltered ground lower down the hill some manufacturers will warrant less where the fall is genuinely good.
Falls, outlets and the water that has to leave a Billericay flat roof
A flat roof is not flat. It is laid to a designed minimum of 1:80, which allows for deflection and construction tolerance and is meant to deliver at least that once built.
Water still standing forty eight hours after rain is ponding, and ponding against a kerb is the condition that finds any weakness in the detail. It shows up regularly on the flat roofed garages and link blocks added to Billericay houses in the seventies and eighties, where the deck has sagged between joists over four decades. Where a survey finds it, the sensible order of work is to correct the fall first, then set the glass into a roof that drains.
Which way a Billericay rear slope faces
The ridge runs roughly east to west, so the older streets have long southern and northern rear elevations, while the later estates curve and point in every direction. Orientation changes the glazing specification more than the size does.
| Rear slope faces | What the room receives | Glazing call |
|---|---|---|
| North, towards Norsey Wood | Even, cool light, often tree shaded | Neutral glass, generous area |
| East, down towards Shotgate | Early brightness, quiet afternoon | Neutral to light solar control |
| South, off the ridge | Strong overhead gain from May onwards | Solar control, area kept disciplined |
| West, towards Laindon | Low hot sun from four o’clock | Solar control, blind ordered with the unit |
Converting a Billericay loft, and the head height it leaves
Loft conversions are frequent on the interwar stock and rare on the trussed estates, for the structural reason above. Where one is going ahead, the glazing decisions belong at design stage and not at second fix.
Two of them matter most. Whether the head of the window sits high enough that somebody standing beside it sees out rather than up, which in practice means a head at around two metres above finished floor. And whether a cable for an electric opener is run at first fix, because it costs almost nothing then and a great deal afterwards.
The clear opening a bedroom in the roof has to give
Once a Billericay loft becomes a bedroom, one unit in the room usually has to serve as a means of escape, and that changes which model can be specified.
The requirement is a clear opening area with a minimum dimension in both directions, and a sill set within a defined height band above the finished floor so somebody can actually get to it. A centre pivot window does not give the same clear opening as a top hung one of identical external size, because the sash sits in the middle of the aperture when open. That distinction is settled at order, not on site.
Solar gain over a south facing Billericay garden room
The starting rule is glazing at fifteen to twenty per cent of the floor area below, and on a south facing rear off the ridge it breaks in a predictable direction.
A four by five metre extension at the top of that range is four square metres of glass facing the entire dome of the sky, with no neighbouring roof shading it. In July that is a great deal of energy arriving overhead at midday. Solar control glass with a low g-value keeps the room usable in August without costing much winter daylight, and pairing it with an opening unit lets the warm air that collects at the highest point leave under its own steam. The balance between the two numbers is worked through on the energy efficient rooflights page.
London Clay under the hill, and what movement does to an opening
Billericay sits on a capping of Bagshot sand and gravel over London Clay, and that geology is the reason so many of the town’s older houses carry the diagonal cracking that turns up in survey reports. London Clay is a shrink-swell soil. It takes up water through the winter and gives it back through a dry summer, and the ground moves vertically as it does.
What that means for a rooflight is indirect but real. Where a house has moved historically, roof planes are rarely as flat or as square as a drawing assumes. A rear extension roof that has settled differentially against the main range can have a genuine twist across it, and a rectangular unit set into a twisted plane will not sit down evenly on its kerb. The result is a frame that is packed at one corner and a seal that is doing more work on one side than the other.
It is why the survey on an older Billericay roof includes a level across the opening rather than a tape measure alone. Where the plane is out, the kerb is built to correct it and the unit lands on a true surface. That is a straightforward thing to do at the time and an awkward thing to argue about afterwards.
The trees make it sharper. Mature oak and hornbeam draw a great deal of water out of clay in a dry spell, and the streets running off Norsey Road have plenty of both. Where a large tree stands close to a rear extension, historic movement is more likely and the level across the opening matters more.
Getting a scaffold up a Billericay drive
Access is usually straightforward on the estates, where houses were laid out with driveways and side gates and a crew can reach the rear without carrying materials through the house.
The awkward addresses are the High Street properties with no rear access at all, and the large wooded plots where a protected canopy stands exactly where a tower wants to go. Both are established at survey and priced then. A long gravel drive with a tight turn is also worth flagging early, because it decides whether materials arrive at the house or at the gate.
Notifying the work to Basildon borough
Fitting a new rooflight or replacing an existing one is notifiable work under Building Regulations in England. It engages Part L for thermal performance, Part K where there is a risk of falling, and Part B where a unit serves as a means of escape. Billericay falls under Basildon borough for both Building Control and planning.
Sunspire handles that notification as part of the job. Planning permission is a separate question, and for most houses in the town rooflights fall under permitted development provided the unit projects no more than 150mm beyond the existing roof plane. Inside the conservation area those rights are commonly restricted, which is why the boundary is checked before anything is ordered.
Where a Billericay enquiry starts
Two photographs and one measurement get you a sensible range by email: the roof from the garden, the ceiling from inside, and the rough size of the room. Most Billericay jobs can be placed within a range before anyone travels.
If you are earlier than that, start with the roof rather than the product. What is the covering, what is the pitch, which way does it face, and what is holding it up. Billericay sits alongside Basildon and Wickford on the areas we cover page, and the costs guide explains what moves a figure between the emailed range and the fixed written price.
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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