Roof Lantern Installation
Flat-roof glazing sized to the room and detailed into the kerb below it.
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Mid Essex
Rooflight installation in Boreham
Village beside the A12, mixed stock. What that means for getting glass into a roof here is the whole of this page.
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BorehamTown covered
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In Boreham
What we install on Boreham 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
16 things worth knowing about Boreham roofs
Boreham sits immediately north east of Chelmsford with the A12 running along its southern side. That road is the single most important thing about specifying glass in a Boreham roof, and it is the thing brochures never mention. A rooflight is a large area of thin material facing straight up at the sky, and sound arrives at a roof from further away than it arrives at a wall.
The rest of the village is a mixture. There is an older core around St Andrew’s church and Church Road, interwar and post-war housing along the main street, later estates behind it, and modern development on the Chelmsford side. Each of those groups has a different roof, and this page works through what changes between them.
- 01 What the A12 does to a specification in Boreham
- 02 Acoustic glazing, and the numbers that matter
- 03 Rain noise on top of road noise
- 04 The village stock, from the church end to the estates
- 05 Concrete interlocking tiles on the post-war Boreham roofs
- 06 Older clay-tiled cottages near St Andrew’s
- 07 Trussed roofs on the later Boreham estates
- 08 Rear extensions on the Boreham plots
- 09 Orientation, and the way Boreham plots sit
- 10 Solar control on a south facing rear roof
- 11 Ventilation, and opening a rooflight beside a trunk road
- 12 Dust, and what it does to a flat rooflight surface
- 13 Permitted development on a Boreham house
- 14 Building Control on a Boreham job
- 15 What the survey checks on a plot near the A12
- 16 Getting a price for a Boreham rooflight
What the A12 does to a specification in Boreham
Traffic noise reaches a roof plane more directly than it reaches a ground floor window. There is no fence, no hedge and no neighbouring house in the way, and a flat or shallow roof presents its full area to sound coming in at a low angle from the carriageway. A house that is acceptably quiet downstairs can be noticeably less so in a loft room or under a new flat rooflight.
The response is a glass specification rather than a different product. That means the acoustic performance of the sealed unit gets asked about at order stage, along with the U-value and the g-value, instead of being discovered after the scaffold has come down.
Acoustic glazing, and the numbers that matter
Two things in a sealed unit do the work. Asymmetry, where the two panes are different thicknesses so they do not resonate at the same frequency and reinforce each other. And a laminated pane, where the plastic interlayer between two sheets of glass damps vibration that a single sheet would pass straight through.
A standard domestic unit with two equal panes is the worst case for sound. An asymmetric unit with a laminated outer leaf is a meaningful improvement across the frequency range that road noise occupies, which is broadly the low and middle bands. Both choices are made when the unit is ordered and neither can be added afterwards.
Acoustic performance is a specification decision at order, not an adjustment at handover.
Rain noise on top of road noise
The two problems share a solution, which is convenient. Rain striking glass is louder than rain striking tile because glass is stiff, thin and well coupled to the frame. On a flat rooflight above a quiet room it is often described as pleasant in the first winter and less so by the third.
Laminated glass in the outer pane reduces the drumming for the same reason it reduces traffic noise: the interlayer absorbs energy rather than transmitting it. Where the room below is a bedroom or a home office facing the A12, specifying for both at once costs nothing extra beyond the laminate itself.
The village stock, from the church end to the estates
Boreham runs from an old core to modern housing over a short distance, and the roofs record that. Around the church and the older parts of Main Road there are clay tiled and slated cottages at steep pitches. Along the road and behind it, interwar and post-war semis with hipped roofs. Further out, later estate housing with trussed rafters and shallower pitches.
The point of listing them is that the covering and the structure decide the job, not the postcode. A survey establishes which group the house belongs to inside the first ten minutes, and the rest of the conversation follows from that.
Concrete interlocking tiles on the post-war Boreham roofs
The default covering on the post-war and later stock is a concrete interlocking tile, usually with a deep double roll or a bold single profile. It is a good roof and a slightly awkward one to flash.
The depth of the profile is the issue. A flashing kit designed for a plain tile has a shallow apron, and laid over a deep profile it bridges the troughs and leaves open channels that wind driven rain travels along. The correct kit for the profile has a deeper skirt that dresses down into the trough and seals against the tile rather than spanning it. Using the nearest kit in the van rather than the right one is how a roof window ends up with a slow water problem three winters later.
Older clay-tiled cottages near St Andrew’s
The older end of the village runs at a steeper pitch on handmade or early machine-made clay tiles. Steep is helpful: water leaves quickly and the flashing has an easier job than it does on a shallow slope.
The complication is the tile itself. Old clay is variable in thickness and camber and it breaks when handled, so an allowance for wastage is made at survey and matching reclaimed tiles are sourced before the roof is opened rather than after. Where the setting is sensitive, a slim dark framed unit sitting flush in the plane is the sensible visual answer.
Trussed roofs on the later Boreham estates
Housing built from the nineteen sixties onwards almost always has a trussed rafter roof, and the later Boreham estates are no exception. A truss is an engineered component with its members working in tension and compression and its joints made with toothed plates. Cutting a web or a bottom chord is not the same as cutting a rafter in a traditional roof.
What follows is a width constraint. A roof window in a trussed roof is sized to fit between the trusses rather than through them, which typically caps the clear width at around five hundred and fifty millimetres at six hundred centres. Where somebody wanted one wide window, two narrow ones side by side with a common flashing is usually the honest answer. Anything wider needs a structural engineer to design a trimming solution, which is achievable and changes the programme.
Rear extensions on the Boreham plots
Plot depths in the village are generous by suburban standards, and single storey rear extensions are common. Most of them end up with a flat roof, and a flat roof is the easiest place in a house to get a large area of glass with no structural argument at all.
The two usual options are a raised roof lantern, which gives the ceiling height and direction, or a flush flat rooflight, which reads as a rectangle of sky and leaves the roof visually quiet. Room width tends to decide it. A narrow galley extension feels compressed under a lantern; a four metre wide kitchen carries one comfortably.
Orientation, and the way Boreham plots sit
Orientation is the most underused input in this whole subject, and it costs nothing to check. A north facing roof plane collects even, cool, shadowless light all day with almost no solar gain, and it will take a generous area of fairly neutral glass. A south or west facing plane collects the July afternoon sun at a very high angle straight down onto the glass.
| Roof plane faces | What happens in July | Sensible glazing call |
|---|---|---|
| North | Steady light, negligible gain | Neutral glass, larger area viable |
| East | Early brightness, calm afternoon | Neutral to light solar control |
| South | Sustained midday and afternoon gain | Solar control glass, area disciplined |
| West | Low hot sun from four onwards | Solar control, external shading considered |
| Flat | Whole sky, peak gain overhead | Solar control almost always |
Solar control on a south facing rear roof
Two numbers describe the thermal behaviour of a rooflight and they pull against each other. The U-value measures heat loss in watts per square metre per kelvin, and lower is better. The g-value measures the fraction of solar energy that passes through, and lower means less summer heat and, unavoidably, slightly less light.
Optimising one and ignoring the other is the classic error. An excellent U-value with an unmanaged g-value produces a room that is cheap to heat in February and unusable by three in the afternoon in July. On a south facing Boreham extension roof the g-value is the number to argue about. There is more detail on glazing performance if that is the deciding factor.
Ventilation, and opening a rooflight beside a trunk road
An opening rooflight does something a window cannot. Warm air collects at the highest point of a room, so an opening at roof level lets it leave while cooler air is drawn in through windows lower down. That is the stack effect and it shifts a surprising volume of air with no fan and no power.
Beside a busy road the calculation changes slightly. Purge ventilation, opening wide for a short period, works well. Leaving a unit on trickle all evening brings road noise in with the air. A unit with a controllable opening range and, where it is out of reach, an electric actuator with a rain sensor, tends to get used more than a manual one on a pole.
Dust, and what it does to a flat rooflight surface
Roofs near a trunk road collect more surface deposit than roofs away from one, and on a horizontal or shallow rooflight there is no gravity assist to shift it. The result is a film that dulls the glass and, on a flush unit with a low upstand, a gradual build-up at the edges where water sits.
Two things help. A self cleaning coating, which uses a fine surface layer to break down organic deposit and let rainwater sheet rather than bead, reduces frequency without removing the job. And a genuine fall across the glass, even a couple of degrees, so water runs off rather than evaporating in place and leaving what it was carrying behind.
Permitted development on a Boreham house
For most houses in the village a rooflight falls under permitted development and no planning application is needed. The conditions are specific and worth knowing. The unit must not project more than one hundred and fifty millimetres beyond the plane of the existing roof slope, and it must not sit higher than the highest part of the roof.
The exceptions are real. Rights are removed in conservation areas and by Article 4 directions, they do not apply to flats and maisonettes, and they are frequently restricted by planning condition on newer estates where the original consent controlled the appearance of the development. Checking takes a few minutes and it happens before anything is ordered.
Building Control on a Boreham job
Fitting a new rooflight or replacing an existing one is notifiable work under the Building Regulations in England. It engages Part L for thermal performance, Part K where there is a risk of falling through or from the opening, and Part B where the unit serves as a means of escape from a habitable room in a roof.
Sunspire handles that notification as part of the job. It matters more than it sounds. An unnotified alteration tends to surface years later during a sale, when a buyer’s solicitor asks for a completion certificate that nobody ever obtained.
What the survey checks on a plot near the A12
The survey turns a range into a price, and on this side of the village it carries an extra item. Alongside the covering and its condition, the pitch, the structure and how it spans, the internal ceiling line, the orientation and the access, it establishes how exposed the roof is to road noise and whether that changes the glass.
It is also where awkward truths appear. A truss where a rafter was assumed. A bathroom extract discharging into the roof void rather than through it. A ceiling that is not where the drawing says. Finding those before a figure is agreed is the entire point of going up there.
Getting a price for a Boreham rooflight
Sunspire quotes in two stages. A range by email once the room, the roof and the rough size are known, then a fixed written figure after the survey, with the notification included. The roof is closed and watertight at the end of every working day, whatever the forecast is doing.
A photograph of the roof from outside, one of the ceiling from inside and an approximate room size is usually enough for a sensible range. Sunspire travels to Boreham from Chelmsford and covers the surrounding villages on the same terms, which are set out on the areas we cover page.
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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.
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- Building Control notification handled
- New installations and replacements