Roof Lantern Installation
Flat-roof glazing sized to the room and detailed into the kerb below it.
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Chelmsford localities
Rooflight installation in Broomfield
Village core beside hospital-driven growth. What that means for getting glass into a roof here is the whole of this page.
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BroomfieldTown covered
Chelmsford localitiesWithin
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In Broomfield
What we install on Broomfield roofs
Flat Roof Rooflight Installation
Flush and kerb-mounted units into single-ply, felt and GRP flat roofs.
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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 Broomfield roofs
Broomfield reads as one place on a map and behaves as two on a roof. There is the old village strung along Main Road, with the round towered church, the green, and a scatter of timber framed and weatherboarded cottages that predate everything around them. Then there is the growth that arrived with the hospital and never really stopped: estate housing from the nineteen seventies onwards, and a good deal of it built in the last thirty years.
The two halves take opposite approaches. In the old core the constraint is consent and fragile fabric. On the estates the constraint is engineered timber and a shallow pitch. Sunspire installs rooflights across both, travelling out to the plot from a working radius that reaches well past the village.
- 01 The hospital, and what it did to the roofline
- 02 The conservation area along Main Road
- 03 Where consent bites on a Broomfield elevation
- 04 Weatherboard, plain tile and the fabric near the green
- 05 Nineteen nineties and two thousands estate roofs
- 06 Attic trusses and houses built with a room already up there
- 07 Dry verges, dry ridges and mortarless detailing
- 08 Interwar and postwar ribbon along the main road
- 09 Noise, and the glazing that answers it
- 10 Rear extensions on an estate house
- 11 Warm roof or cold roof, and why it matters under the glass
- 12 Upstand, fall and outlet on the extension roof
- 13 Orientation across the Broomfield estates
- 14 Access, parking and the working day
- 15 Notification, and the certificate that surfaces years later
- 16 What the survey turns up, and how a Broomfield price is set
The hospital, and what it did to the roofline
Broomfield grew outwards because a large hospital sat on its edge, and the housing built to serve that growth is stacked in bands by decade. Walk from the green towards the hospital and you pass late Victorian, then interwar ribbon, then seventies estate, then nineteen nineties, then estates finished inside the last ten years.
Each band has a different roof and a different answer. The useful thing for a homeowner is that the band is easy to identify from the ground: the tile profile, the verge detail and the pitch tell you which decade you are standing in, and between them they decide roughly what a rooflight in that roof will involve.
The conservation area along Main Road
The old village core is designated, and designation changes what a visible roof slope is allowed to do rather than banning glass outright.
Inside the boundary the expectation is that anything new in a slope seen from the street sits in the plane of the covering, not proud of it, and reads as a slim rectangle of dark metal rather than a modern white frame. That means a conservation rooflight with a cast or pressed frame and a central glazing bar. Rear slopes with no public view usually get more latitude, and the sensible sequence is to establish that with the planning officer before committing to a size.
Where consent bites on a Broomfield elevation
The practical question in the old core is not whether a rooflight is possible but which slope it goes in. Three factors decide it: whether the elevation is visible from a public place, whether the building is listed in its own right, and whether the covering itself is historic.
Those three can point in different directions on the same house. A rear slope may be invisible from the road and still be the original hand-made tile that matters most. In that situation the conversation is about how the covering is taken up and put back rather than about whether the opening is allowed, and the answer is that old tiles are lifted by hand, stacked, and relaid around the finished opening.
Weatherboard, plain tile and the fabric near the green
The oldest Broomfield buildings carry small unit coverings, plain clay tile in double lap, on cut roofs that were built before anybody standardised anything. Rafters wander off their nominal spacing. Pitches run steep, often past forty five degrees.
Both of those help. A steep pitch sheds water so efficiently that the flashing is working well within itself, and a cut roof can usually be trimmed with a doubled rafter each side and a header top and bottom. The care goes into the tiling. Plain tile flashing uses soakers dressed between courses rather than a one piece apron, and every tile around the opening is cut and hung individually. It is slow work and it is what makes an opening in old fabric disappear.
Nineteen nineties and two thousands estate roofs
The newer Broomfield estates are trussed, pitched somewhere between twenty two and thirty five degrees, and covered in either a smooth faced flat profile concrete tile or a low profile interlocking pantile.
Two things follow. The flashing kit is chosen off the profile depth, and getting that wrong leaves an open channel under the apron that finds its way inside within a couple of winters. And the truss webs cap the opening width at a little over five hundred millimetres between bays unless an engineer designs a trimming solution. Twin units in adjacent bays is a common outcome here, and it gives a more even wash of light across a ceiling than a single wider opening would.
The tile profile and the truss centres between them settle most of a modern estate job before anyone opens a brochure.
Attic trusses and houses built with a room already up there
A proportion of the newest Broomfield housing was built with attic trusses, which are a different component from a standard fink. The webs are arranged around a clear rectangular void so that the top floor is habitable from day one.
Those roofs are the easiest in the village to glaze, because the room exists, the floor is designed for the load and the ceiling line is already set. The detail worth checking is where the sloping ceiling meets the vertical, because that junction is often exactly where somebody wants the window and it is the one place the truss is thickest. A unit set a few hundred millimetres up the slope from the junction gives a better view out and a cleaner reveal.
Dry verges, dry ridges and mortarless detailing
Roofs built since the mid nineties in Broomfield are largely dry fixed: clipped verge units, a ridge on a roll and a dry batten, no mortar anywhere. That is good news for a rooflight install and it changes the method.
On a mortar bedded roof the tiles near an opening have to be cut free and rebedded. On a dry fixed roof they unclip, and they go back the same way. The one thing to watch is that clips and unions are proprietary to the tile manufacturer. Losing or damaging them means matching the system rather than substituting a generic clip, so they are recovered carefully and reused, and matching stock is brought to site where the profile is known in advance.
Interwar and postwar ribbon along the main road
Between the old core and the newer estates sits a band of interwar and immediately postwar housing: hipped roofs, generous pitches around forty degrees, cut rafters with a purlin, and lofts with genuine standing height.
This is the most straightforward stock in Broomfield. The pitch means a roof window flashing performs exactly as designed. The cut roof means a rafter can be trimmed without an engineer. And the loft is usually deep enough that a room can be made from it without lowering ceilings below. Where a hip cuts the slope short, a unit is placed to keep a sensible margin of tiling between its frame and the hip line so the flashing has somewhere to land.
Noise, and the glazing that answers it
Broomfield sits under more movement than a typical Essex village: main road traffic, hospital activity through the night, and occasional aircraft. Glass is the honest lever here, and it works better than most people expect.
An acoustic laminate interlayer in the outer pane adds mass and damping and lifts the reduction figure of a unit by a useful margin over a standard double glazed rooflight. It also takes the sharpness out of rain noise, which is the complaint people actually raise after the first heavy night. The interlayer is a factory build, so it is chosen at order rather than added later, and it is worth pairing with a properly compressed perimeter seal because a small air path undoes most of the benefit.
Rear extensions on an estate house
A single storey rear on a nineteen nineties Broomfield house is a common project, and the roof over it is usually flat and usually modest in width.
On a narrow return a flush flat rooflight gives more usable daylight than a raised structure, because the ceiling stays continuous and the glass sits in the plane the eye reads as the roof. On a wide full width rear, a roof lantern earns its keep, giving the room height and a direction to look in. On plots where the extension sits close to a boundary, the flush unit also avoids adding height where height is contentious.
Warm roof or cold roof, and why it matters under the glass
Flat roofs come in two arrangements. A warm roof puts the insulation above the deck, keeping the whole structure at internal temperature. A cold roof puts it between the joists, leaving a ventilated void above.
Setting a rooflight into a cold roof is where problems start, because the kerb passes straight through the insulation line and the void has to keep breathing around it. A warm roof avoids both issues: the kerb is insulated on its outer face, the vapour control layer runs up and over it, and there is no void to ventilate. Where a Broomfield survey finds a cold roof with an existing unit that has been running with condensation, the sensible order of work is to rebuild the build-up warm and then set glass into it.
Upstand, fall and outlet on the extension roof
The kerb under a flush unit is built to one hundred and fifty millimetres above the finished surface. That figure is the sum of how deep water can stand before it finds an edge and how far wind can push it up a vertical face.
Fall matters just as much. A flat roof is set out so that at least one in eighty survives deflection and tolerance, and water still lying two days after rain is ponding. On the small rectangular roofs typical of Broomfield estate extensions, the outlet is often at one corner and a rooflight placed centrally sits across the flow line. The unit is positioned with the drainage route in mind, and firrings are adjusted where the position has to win.
Orientation across the Broomfield estates
Estate layouts here were drawn to fit road curves rather than the sun, so identical houses two streets apart can face opposite ways. Orientation moves the glass specification more than the size does.
| Slope or roof faces | What the room gets | Specification call |
|---|---|---|
| North | Flat, even daylight, no glare | Neutral glass, larger area viable |
| East, towards the hospital side | Strong early light, quiet afternoons | Neutral to light solar control |
| South | High summer sun overhead at midday | Solar control glass, opening unit for heat release |
| West | Low glare from late afternoon | Solar control, blind specified with the unit |
| Flat roof, any aspect | Sky from horizon to horizon | Solar control as standard, area sized to the room |
Access, parking and the working day
Broomfield plots divide neatly. Estate houses generally have a driveway, a side gate and a clear route to the rear, which is the easiest arrangement there is. The old village frontages on Main Road are the opposite: narrow, close to a busy road, and sometimes with the only rear access through the house itself.
On the main road side, hospital traffic sets the working pattern. A scaffold lift or a delivery is timed away from the pressure points rather than dropped into them, and where a vehicle has to stand on the highway that is arranged in advance. None of it is complicated, but it goes on the quote at survey rather than being found on the first morning.
Notification, and the certificate that surfaces years later
Installing a new rooflight or replacing an existing one is notifiable under Building Regulations in England. Part L covers thermal performance, Part K applies where there is a risk of falling, and Part B applies where a unit serves as a means of escape from a habitable room.
Sunspire handles that notification as part of the job. The reason it matters is not the inspection, which is short. It is the sale, years later, when a buyer’s solicitor asks for a completion certificate for work that was never registered and the chain stalls while somebody applies for regularisation. Planning consent is a separate question and turns on the conservation area boundary and the one hundred and fifty millimetre projection rule.
What the survey turns up, and how a Broomfield price is set
Two figures are used. A range comes back by email from photographs and a rough measurement. A fixed price follows a survey, because that is the point at which the guesses stop.
The survey records the covering and its profile depth, the measured pitch, what is holding the roof up, the ceiling line inside, the orientation, and the route in and out. In this village the recurring finds are a cold flat roof build-up on a nineties extension, a truss where a drawing assumed a rafter, and historic tile on a rear slope that nobody had looked at closely. Broomfield sits with the rest of the county on the areas we cover page, and the costs guide explains what moves a job from the range to the fixed figure. The roof is closed and watertight at the end of every working day.
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