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 Chigwell
Large detached, modern rebuilds. What that means for getting glass into a roof here is the whole of this page.
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In Chigwell
What we install on Chigwell 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 Chigwell roofs
Chigwell is unusual in Essex for having large houses on large plots that cannot get any larger. Almost the whole parish sits inside the Metropolitan Green Belt, which caps how much a dwelling can grow in volume and often stops a further extension outright. The response over the last thirty years has been to rebuild rather than extend, and then to work inwards and upwards.
That produces a particular rooflight market. Wide spans over open plan ground floors, big hipped roofs with room in them, flat roof links between house and garage, and a growing number of early 2000s lanterns and domes now reaching the end of their working lives. Sunspire covers Chigwell from Chelmsford as part of its normal working radius.
- 01 Green Belt caps, and why the light goes up rather than out
- 02 Replacement dwellings, and the roofs they came with
- 03 Attic trusses and engineered roof structures
- 04 Large hipped roofs and where an opening can go
- 05 Wide spans, steels and lantern openings
- 06 Flat roof links between house and garage
- 07 Parapets, and terminating a covering behind one
- 08 Early aluminium lanterns reaching the end of their life
- 09 Domed units on 1970s and 1980s Chigwell roofs
- 10 South facing open plan, and the g-value conversation
- 11 Chigwell village and Chigwell Row
- 12 Planning conditions on newer Chigwell developments
- 13 Garden rooms, orangeries and pool buildings
- 14 Access across a large Chigwell plot
- 15 What a Chigwell survey records
- 16 Where a Chigwell enquiry starts
Green Belt caps, and why the light goes up rather than out
Green Belt policy controls volume and footprint rather than glass. Where a house has already used its permitted enlargement, or where the council resists further sprawl across a plot, the remaining moves are to convert what is already enclosed and to bring daylight into the middle of a deep plan.
That is exactly the problem a rooflight solves. A deep ground floor with rooms three or four metres back from any external wall cannot be lit from the side at any sensible cost, but a flat roof link or a single storey rear section overhead can carry glass. Getting the light from above also avoids the overlooking objections that a new window in a flank wall attracts on a plot with close neighbours.
Replacement dwellings, and the roofs they came with
A large share of the housing along the principal Chigwell roads is a replacement dwelling: the original interwar or post-war house demolished and a substantially larger one built on the plot, mostly since the late 1990s.
Those roofs share a set of characteristics. Big hipped forms in concrete or clay interlocking tile, pitches around 35 to 40 degrees, generous overhangs, and frequently a room in the roof designed in from the outset with attic trusses or a purpose designed structure. Because they were built to modern standards there is usually a full underlay, adequate insulation depth and clean access into the void, all of which makes forming an opening quicker and cleaner than on older stock.
Attic trusses and engineered roof structures
An attic truss is not a standard fink truss. It is engineered with a clear zone in the middle to give a usable room, with the loads carried down the outer webs and the bottom chord doubling as a floor member.
That geometry gives good openings between trusses in the sloping side sections, but it does not permit cutting a web or a chord any more than a standard truss does. Openings are sized to the bay, which at 600 centres usually caps a single unit near 550mm wide unless a structural engineer designs a trimming solution. Where a large clear area of glass is wanted, the workable answers are a run of units along the slope or a designed opening with new steel or engineered timber, decided before the covering comes off.
On an engineered roof the truss drawing is worth more than a tape measure, and the manufacturer’s mark is usually still stamped on a chord.
Large hipped roofs and where an opening can go
A hipped roof narrows towards the ridge, which means the usable width of any given slope shrinks with height, and hip rafters occupy the corners at 45 degrees to everything else.
An opening therefore sits in the wider lower portion of a plane, clear of the hip rafters and clear of any valley where a projecting wing meets the main roof. On the very large hipped roofs common in Chigwell there is plenty of room for that, and it is usually possible to place units where the room wants them rather than where the structure allows. The one recurring conflict is a chimney or a flue in the middle of the best plane, which needs clear covering all round it for its own flashing before a rooflight is added nearby.
Wide spans, steels and lantern openings
Chigwell rear extensions are wide. Four, five and six metre spans over kitchens are ordinary, and an opening for a roof lantern in the middle of that is a structural exercise rather than a carpentry one.
Below about a metre and a half in either direction, timber trimming carries the load. Beyond that, and particularly where the opening runs across the span rather than with it, the load has to go somewhere and a steel is the usual destination. That changes the shape of the project: a structural calculation, a longer lead time, a padstone and bearing detail, and a different Building Control conversation. None of it is a problem. Finding out about it after a finish has been chosen is the part that hurts.
Flat roof links between house and garage
The standard Chigwell rebuild plan puts a double or triple garage to one side, joined to the house by a single storey link containing a utility, a boot room or a hallway. The link roof is flat.
Those links are among the best daylight opportunities on the whole house, because they sit between two tall elements and the space beneath them is otherwise lit from one end only. A run of modest flush units spaced along a link gives far more even light than one large opening, and it keeps the joist spans undisturbed. The flat roof rooflight page covers how the kerbs under those are built and why the upstand height governs the outcome.
Parapets, and terminating a covering behind one
Modern rebuilds frequently hide their flat roofs behind parapet walls, because a parapet reads as a cleaner architectural line than a visible fascia and gutter.
A parapet changes the drainage. Water cannot run off an edge, so it goes to internal outlets, and if an outlet blocks the roof becomes a tank with a wall around it. Setting a rooflight into a parapet roof therefore means paying more attention to the upstand than usual: 150mm from finished surface to top of kerb is the working floor, and on a parapet roof with a single outlet it is worth more. It also means the covering has to be dressed up both the kerb and the parapet, with the laps and terminations detailed so neither is relying on the other.
Early aluminium lanterns reaching the end of their life
The first wave of Chigwell rebuilds is now twenty to twenty five years old, and the lanterns that went on them are showing it. Sealed units have a working life, and twenty to twenty five years is a normal span.
The signs are consistent. Misting between the panes, which means the seal has failed and the desiccant is saturated. Chalky or faded powder coating. And the thermal performance of an early aluminium frame with a poor thermal break, which loses heat at the bars and produces condensation running down the inside of the glazing bars onto the plaster. A replacement into a sound existing kerb is often a short job, and it is the natural moment to upgrade the glass because the opening is already there and the labour is already committed.
Domed units on 1970s and 1980s Chigwell roofs
The properties that were not rebuilt tend to carry the previous generation of rooflight: polycarbonate or acrylic domes on timber kerbs, fitted at some point between about 1970 and 1990.
Those are well past their working life. Acrylic goes brittle and yellows under ultraviolet, the fixings that hold the flange down work loose as the material moves, and the timber kerb underneath has usually been over-boarded at some point when the covering was renewed. Swapping a dome for a modern flush unit means checking the kerb is sound and at the right height for the current build-up, which is why a like for like swap is priced after somebody has actually looked at what the dome is sitting on.
South facing open plan, and the g-value conversation
The Chigwell plan form is a wide rear kitchen and living space opening onto a large south facing garden, with a lot of glass at the back and often a lantern above. That is a lot of solar collection area pointing the same way.
Two glass numbers describe the behaviour 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 how much solar energy passes through, expressed as a fraction, and lower means less gain and slightly less light. Optimising the first while ignoring the second produces a room that is cheap to heat in February and unusable by mid afternoon in August. On a large south facing lantern, solar control glass is close to a default.
| Situation | Glass call | Reason |
|---|---|---|
| Large south facing lantern over open plan | Solar control, low g-value | High summer gain straight down onto the glass |
| North facing rear slope | Neutral glass, larger area viable | Even light, negligible gain |
| Flat link roof between house and garage | Solar control plus an opening unit | Whole sky exposure, warm air needs a route out |
| Bedroom in an attic truss roof | Laminated outer pane, blackout blind ordered with the unit | Rain noise and early summer light |
Chigwell village and Chigwell Row
The old village around the church and the historic core at Chigwell Row are a different proposition from the rebuilt roads. Conservation area designation applies, there are listed buildings, and permitted development rights for rooflights are commonly withdrawn by an Article 4 direction.
On that fabric the design follows historic principles rather than modern ones: an opening placed between existing common rafters so no historic timber is cut, lead soaker detailing dressed between courses rather than a proprietary kit, and a conservation rooflight with a slim cast frame sitting flush at around 20mm projection. Listed building consent is a separate approval from planning permission and covers internal alterations too, roof timbers included.
Planning conditions on newer Chigwell developments
The assumption that a rooflight is permitted development does not hold everywhere in the town, and the reason is rarely conservation status.
Permitted development rights are frequently removed by condition on the original permission for newer estates and for individual replacement dwellings, particularly in the Green Belt where the volume of the approved house was itself the point of contention. Checking the original decision notice for a condition removing Class C rights takes a few minutes on the council’s planning portal and it settles the question. The other standing conditions are the ordinary ones: a unit must not project more than 150mm beyond the plane of the existing roof slope, and must not sit higher than the highest part of the roof.
Garden rooms, orangeries and pool buildings
Large plots produce outbuildings, and Chigwell has plenty: garden rooms, orangeries, home offices, gyms and pool enclosures, most with flat or low pitched roofs and most built in the last two decades.
Two things distinguish them technically. A pool building carries very high internal humidity, which pushes the surface condensation risk right up and makes both a low U-value and a genuine ventilation route non-negotiable rather than optional. And an orangery roof is usually a flat perimeter with a central lantern, so the lantern kerb and the perimeter build-up are designed together. Both are ordinary work, but both are specified differently from a kitchen extension.
Access across a large Chigwell plot
Access is generally the easiest part of a Chigwell job and it is worth saying why, because it moves the price in the right direction for once.
Wide frontages, long drives and side access to the rear mean a lorry can usually get close, a scaffold can be erected without a highway licence, and materials do not have to travel through the house. Where the constraint bites is at the far end of a deep rear garden or across new landscaping and resin drives that will not take a wheeled load or a scaffold base without protection. Those get looked at during the survey and boarded out rather than driven over.
What a Chigwell survey records
The survey establishes the roof structure and whether it is a cut roof, standard trusses or attic trusses, the truss manufacturer’s data where it is still stamped on a chord, the covering and its profile, the pitch measured at more than one point, the flat roof build-up and its fall, the outlet positions on any parapet roof, orientation, and the ceiling line inside.
Where a large opening is proposed it also establishes what the span is doing and whether a structural calculation will be needed, because that single answer determines both the programme and the Building Control route. On a replacement it records the existing kerb height, its condition and how the current covering terminates against it.
Where a Chigwell enquiry starts
Send a photograph of the roof or the flat roof area from an upstairs window, a photograph of the ceiling below, the rough size of the room or the link, and say whether the property is a replacement dwelling, since the original planning conditions are usually worth a look in that case.
A range comes back by email and a fixed written figure follows the survey. The costs page sets out what moves the number between the two stages, and the roof lantern page covers what changes once a structural opening is involved. Chigwell sits with Epping and the rest of West Essex on the areas we cover page, and the guides section goes further into glass specification.
Also covered
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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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