Roof Lantern Installation
Flat-roof glazing sized to the room and detailed into the kerb below it.
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West Essex
Rooflight installation in Buckhurst Hill
Victorian villas, steep plots. What that means for getting glass into a roof here is the whole of this page.
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In Buckhurst Hill
What we install on Buckhurst Hill 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
15 things worth knowing about Buckhurst Hill roofs
Buckhurst Hill is built on a slope, and that single piece of topography changes how a rooflight job is planned here. The land falls from the ridge along Queen’s Road and the forest edge eastwards towards the Roding valley, sharply in places, and the houses step down it. Roofs that would be private anywhere else are in full view from the road below, and roofs that face a street are hidden by the rise behind them.
The other defining feature is the age of the stock. Buckhurst Hill filled out in the decades after the railway reached it in the 1850s, so the core of the town is Victorian villa and terrace in London stock brick under Welsh slate. Sunspire covers it from Chelmsford as part of its normal working radius.
- 01 The slope, and why front and rear mean very little here
- 02 Victorian villas off the railway
- 03 Welsh slate, and why it is not lifted like a tile
- 04 London stock brick, stucco and the abutment detail
- 05 Lower ground floors cut into the hill
- 06 Walk-on glass over a Buckhurst Hill terrace
- 07 Scaffold on a falling site
- 08 The Monkhams estate, covenants and consent
- 09 Conservation areas and Article 4 across the town
- 10 Valley gutters in the older terraces
- 11 Lead bay roofs and small flat areas
- 12 Steep pitch, sill height and the view out
- 13 Roding valley ground and exposure across it
- 14 What a Buckhurst Hill survey records
- 15 Where a Buckhurst Hill enquiry starts
The slope, and why front and rear mean very little here
On a level street, the planning question about a rooflight is simple: front slope is visible, rear slope is not. On a hillside that shorthand stops working.
A rear roof on a house sitting above a road is often the most visible plane on the whole building, because the ground below drops away and the slope is read in elevation from a hundred metres off. Conversely a front slope on a house cut into the rise can be almost invisible from the pavement, since the eye is level with the eaves. Where consent is in play, the assessment follows what can actually be seen from public ground, so the useful preparation is a photograph taken from the road below and one from the road above rather than an assumption about which side is which.
On a hillside the deciding question is what the roof is seen from, not which way it faces.
Victorian villas off the railway
The stock around the station and along the older roads is mid to late Victorian: semi-detached and detached villas in London stock or gault brick, with stuccoed dressings, canted bay windows and deep bracketed eaves.
Roof pitches sit around 30 to 35 degrees, shallower than the Edwardian stock further up the forest edge, and the structure is a cut roof with rafters at 400 or 450 centres carried on purlins. That combination is workable but it constrains unit height, because a shallower pitch means a given unit projects further into the room’s headroom and its sill lands lower. Setting the opening out in the loft against the actual rafter bays, before ordering, is what keeps that from becoming a surprise at second fix.
Welsh slate, and why it is not lifted like a tile
Slate is the covering that catches out anyone used to tile. A plain or interlocking tile hangs on a nib over a batten and lifts off with a hand. A slate is nailed, usually twice, and it is covered by the two courses above it.
Removing slates around an opening therefore means using a ripper to cut or draw the nails, working upwards, and refixing on the way back down with lead or copper tingles where a slate cannot be renailed. The flashing itself is a low profile kit dressed tight to the surface, because slate is thin and flat and a deep kit made for a profiled tile will stand proud and let water track behind it. It is slower than tiled work, it is a different skill, and the difference shows up in the programme rather than being hidden in it.
London stock brick, stucco and the abutment detail
Many Buckhurst Hill roofs run up against something: a party parapet, a stuccoed chimney stack, a rendered flank wall on a stepped pair of houses.
Where an opening sits near an abutment the flashing has to be chased into a raked joint and pointed, and the material behind matters. A joint raked out of soft Victorian lime mortar and repointed hard in cement will crack along the interface as the wall moves, and that crack becomes the water path. Lime mortar behind a lead flashing accommodates the movement instead. On stucco, cutting a chase is more invasive than it looks, so a stepped flashing dressed over the render with a separate cover is often the sounder answer.
Lower ground floors cut into the hill
Because the ground falls, a large number of Buckhurst Hill houses have accommodation below the level of the front door: semi-basements, lower ground kitchens opening onto a rear garden, garages tucked under the front elevation.
Those rooms are the darkest in the house and they frequently have no roof of their own, because there is a whole storey sitting above them. The daylight route is either a terrace above them, which is a walk-on question, or a light well, or a sun tunnel where a duct can be run through a void to a ceiling diffuser. A rigid reflective tube of 350mm diameter carries usable daylight over several metres of run, which is often enough to reach the middle of a lower ground room.
Walk-on glass over a Buckhurst Hill terrace
Where the ground falls away behind a house, the ground floor rear frequently becomes a terrace with habitable space beneath it. That is the classic condition for structural glass in the floor.
A walk-on rooflight is a flat rooflight that is also a floor, and the build-up is heavier than it looks. Multiple laminated layers with a slip resistant top surface, a frame carrying a point load as well as a distributed one, and a supporting structure that is designed rather than assumed. The result is quiet from above and dramatic from below, and it is one of the few situations where the glass genuinely is the expensive half of the job. It also needs the structural design settled before anything else, since the frame dimensions follow from it.
Scaffold on a falling site
Scaffolding a house on a slope is not the same job as scaffolding one on the level, and it is a real line in a Buckhurst Hill price.
Standards have to be set off a level base, so on falling ground the scaffold is stepped, with adjustable bases and sole boards bedded on ground that is often soft, planted or paved with something that will not take a point load. Where a plot falls steeply the lift heights differ front to back on the same elevation. None of that is difficult, but it takes materials and time that a flat site does not, so it belongs in the fixed figure rather than turning up as an extra. It is assessed at survey along with where a lorry can stand on a steep and often narrow road.
The Monkhams estate, covenants and consent
The Monkhams estate is an early twentieth century planned suburb of large houses on wide plots, and it has two layers of control rather than one.
The planning layer is conventional and follows conservation area status where it applies. The second layer is private: estates of this type were commonly laid out with restrictive covenants in the deeds governing external alterations, and a covenant binds regardless of what planning permits. It is worth a look at the title deeds early, because a covenant is discovered by a solicitor at the point of sale rather than by a council officer at the point of work, which is the worse moment to find it.
Conservation areas and Article 4 across the town
Buckhurst Hill has conservation area coverage over its older and more coherent parts rather than across the whole town, and boundaries follow individual roads. Two adjacent houses can sit on opposite sides of a line.
Inside a boundary, permitted development rights for rooflights are commonly withdrawn by an Article 4 direction, so an application is required for work that would be automatic a street away. Where consent is needed on a visible plane, the unit that gets it is a conservation rooflight: slim cast frame, central vertical glazing bar, sitting flush with a projection of around 20mm or less above the slate. Proportion carries as much weight as material, and a tall narrow unit reads correctly where a wide one does not.
Valley gutters in the older terraces
Some of the Victorian terraces near the station and the shops carry an M-shaped roof: two parallel slopes with a central valley gutter running front to back between them, hidden behind a parapet.
That arrangement is unforgiving. The valley is a lined channel carrying the discharge of both planes to a single outlet, it is often narrower than it should be, and there is nowhere for water to go if the outlet blocks. An opening cut into one of those slopes has to keep well clear of the valley line so the side flashing terminates on clear covering, and the outlet capacity should be looked at while the roof is open. Where the room below only has valley to work with, the sensible move is usually to take the light from the other plane.
Lead bay roofs and small flat areas
The canted bay is a signature of the Victorian villa here, and most of them are topped with a small flat lead or later felt roof. Rear additions add more small flat areas.
Those are candidates for a modest flat rooflight, but the constraint is size. A bay roof is small, the kerb takes up perimeter, and lead is laid in bays with rolls and drips that determine where anything can be built off. Where the area is genuinely tight, a single small flush unit set centrally with clear lead all round it works. Where somebody wants a large opening, the honest answer is that the roof is not big enough and the light should come from a bigger plane elsewhere on the building.
Steep pitch, sill height and the view out
Pitch changes where a roof window’s opening sits relative to a person standing in the room, and on Buckhurst Hill’s mix of 30 and 45 degree slopes that produces very different results from the same unit.
| Roof pitch | Effect of a 1400mm tall unit | Practical consequence |
|---|---|---|
| Around 20 degrees | Sill low, head only slightly higher | Sky view only, little sense of outlook |
| Around 35 degrees | Sill near sitting eye level | Sky and middle distance from a chair |
| Around 45 degrees | Sill near standing waist height | Ground level view, best sense of outlook |
The general rule is that a steeper slope gives a more window-like experience and a shallower one gives a light source. Neither is wrong, but which one somebody is buying should be settled before the unit is ordered rather than discovered when the plaster goes on.
Roding valley ground and exposure across it
The eastern side of the town drops to the Roding, and the ground down there is low, damp and open. Wind crosses it with little to slow it down before it reaches the roofs on the lower slopes.
Driven rain is pushed up a vertical face by wind pressure, which is half of where the 150mm upstand figure comes from in the first place. On an exposed lower slope with a flat roof, 150mm from finished surface to the top of the kerb is a floor rather than a target, and trimming it so a unit sits lower for appearance is a decision that gets regretted. Damp ground also raises indoor humidity, which pushes the surface condensation risk up and makes a warmer inner pane worth paying for.
What a Buckhurst Hill survey records
The survey covers the covering and its fixings, the pitch measured at several points, the rafter centres and purlin positions taken in the loft, the abutment construction and mortar type where an opening runs near one, the internal ceiling line, orientation, and the access and scaffold arrangement on falling ground.
Where consent is likely it also gathers the evidence for it: photographs from the roads above and below, a note of exactly what is visible from public ground, and the projection of the proposed frame above the slate. On a lower ground or terrace job it establishes what is structurally under the proposed glass before any figure is put to it.
Where a Buckhurst Hill enquiry starts
Send a photograph of the roof from outside, ideally including one from the lower road if the house sits above one, a photograph of the ceiling from inside, and the rough room size. Say whether the property is inside a conservation area and whether the deeds carry any covenant on external alterations.
A range comes back by email on that basis and a fixed written figure follows the survey. The costs page explains what moves the number between the two, and the replacement page covers what changes when an existing unit is being swapped rather than a new opening formed. Buckhurst Hill sits with Epping and the rest of the forest fringe 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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