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 Little Baddow
Scattered village, timber frame and thatch. What that means for getting glass into a roof here is the whole of this page.
We travel to Little Baddow
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Little BaddowTown covered
Mid EssexWithin
30Mile radius by road
10Year workmanship guarantee
In Little Baddow
What we install on Little Baddow 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 Little Baddow roofs
Little Baddow has no centre. It is a scattered parish strung along North Hill, Church Road, The Ridge and a set of lanes dropping towards the Chelmer, with houses standing in ones and twos rather than in streets. The building stock reflects that history. Medieval and Tudor timber frame, a good deal of thatch, Victorian estate cottages, farm ranges converted to houses, and post war building set into large plots between them.
Rooflight work in a parish like this is never a catalogue job. The survey does most of the thinking, because the roof is found rather than specified. What follows is what a Little Baddow roof usually asks for, taken in the order the work actually meets it.
- 01 Why a Little Baddow roof is rarely a flat plane
- 02 Oak rafters, and fixing into timber that has seasoned for centuries
- 03 Thatch, and where the glass goes instead
- 04 Peg tiles, and the courses that come off first
- 05 Listed building consent, and what it asks of a rooflight
- 06 Rear outshots, catslides and the slopes nobody sees
- 07 Cold roofs, and the void above an old ceiling
- 08 Beetle, sapwood and what a survey finds in a historic roof
- 09 Barns, cartlodges and stables that became houses
- 10 The valley floor, and how it differs from the ridge above
- 11 Single track lanes and the scaffold that has to reach them
- 12 Power to an opening unit in an old house
- 13 Collars, ceiling lines and where a unit can finish
- 14 Making good a covering that cannot be bought
- 15 How a Little Baddow enquiry runs
Why a Little Baddow roof is rarely a flat plane
A modern roof is built to a line. A four hundred year old one has settled onto its wall plates, absorbed the movement of the frame below it, and arrived at a surface that dips, twists and changes pitch across its own length. Sight along the ridge of an old house here and you will usually see a curve in it. That is the building behaving normally, not failing.
For a rooflight it changes two things. A unit frame is rigid and square, so the opening has to be trimmed to give it a true seat rather than simply following the rafters either side of it. And the weathering has to be dressed onto a covering that falls away in places, which means lead or a soft alloy worked by hand rather than a pressed kit taken straight from a box.
Oak rafters, and fixing into timber that has seasoned for centuries
Historic oak is not the material a fixing schedule assumes. It has dried for hundreds of years, it is dense enough to bend a nail, and it splits along the grain if a screw is driven without a pilot hole. Sizes are irregular too, because the members were cut from what the tree gave, so rafter spacing in an old roof varies from three hundred to five hundred millimetres within one slope.
The practical answers are simple and slow. Positions are set out from what the timber actually does rather than from a nominal centre. Pilot holes go in ahead of every fixing. Stainless steel is used against oak, since the tannin in the timber corrodes plain steel and stains the surrounding surface. Nothing here is difficult, but none of it is quick.
In an old roof the unit is set out from the timber that is there, never from the timber a drawing expected.
Thatch, and where the glass goes instead
Thatch is a deep, breathing, combustible covering laid to a steep pitch, usually fifty degrees or more, with the coat work built up in courses over a hundred and fifty millimetres thick. Glazing cannot be weathered into it. There is no plane for a flashing to sit on and no way to terminate a thatch edge against a rigid frame that will still be sound after the next re-ridging.
What thatched houses in the parish very often do have is a later addition in tile or slate: a Victorian rear outshot, a twentieth century kitchen wing, a garden room. Those slopes take glass perfectly well, and because the addition is usually at the back of the house it is also where a designated setting is least sensitive. The daylight lands in the room that needs it, which is rarely the room under the thatch.
Peg tiles, and the courses that come off first
The older tiled roofs around the village are hand made clay plain tiles hung on oak or chestnut pegs, sometimes over riven laths. They are small, cambered, uneven in colour and not interchangeable, which is why the sequence of taking them off matters as much as putting them back.
Tiles are lifted in courses from above the opening, stacked in the order they came off, and re-hung in that order once the unit is set and the flashing dressed. A modern machine made plain tile beside a hand made one is obvious from the lane for years, so breakages are made up from reclaimed stock in the right gauge and colour rather than from a merchant’s pallet. Ordering that stock has a lead time, and it belongs in the programme rather than in a surprise.
Listed building consent, and what it asks of a rooflight
A large share of the older housing here is listed, and listing is not confined to the front elevation. It covers the whole building, including the roof structure and the covering, and consent is a separate matter from planning permission. The general position is set out in rooflights in listed buildings and in more depth on conservation areas and listed buildings across Essex, so this page stays with what the parish itself throws up.
What tends to succeed is a proposal on a slope with no public view, using a flush fitting conservation pattern unit with a slim dark frame and a central bar, sized to sit within the existing rafter spacing so no historic timber is lost. What tends to struggle is a wide modern unit standing proud of a hand made tile roof facing a lane. The design is settled before anything is ordered.
Rear outshots, catslides and the slopes nobody sees
Essex farmhouses and cottages grew backwards. A main range gets a lean-to, the lean-to gets a catslide taken down over it, and by the nineteenth century the back of the building is a series of low slopes at different pitches meeting each other at odd angles. Those slopes are often the best place in the whole house for daylight.
They are hidden from the road, they usually sit over a kitchen or a back stair that has always been dark, and they are frequently later work rather than original fabric. The constraint is pitch. A catslide can run down to twenty degrees or below by the time it reaches the eaves, and most roof windows want fifteen as a floor, with the weathering detail tightened well before that.
Cold roofs, and the void above an old ceiling
Insulating an old roof at rafter level is where a lot of moisture problems begin. A traditional roof was ventilated by accident: gaps at the eaves, an unsealed ridge, a covering that let air move through it. Fill the rafter zone with insulation and seal the ceiling below, and that accidental ventilation stops while the moisture from the house carries on.
A rooflight opening is a good moment to get this right, because the build-up is exposed. Either a ventilated cavity of at least fifty millimetres is maintained above the insulation with a clear path from eaves to ridge, or the construction is taken to a warm roof with the insulation continuous over the rafters. Mixing the two, which is what happens by default, produces a cold surface with damp air against it.
Beetle, sapwood and what a survey finds in a historic roof
Opening a roof of this age nearly always reveals something. Common furniture beetle in the sapwood edges of otherwise sound oak. A rafter foot that has rotted where a gutter once overflowed. A purlin end bearing on damp masonry. Deathwatch beetle in the larger sections, which is slower and more serious.
None of it changes whether a rooflight can be fitted. It changes what the trimming has to bear on. Sound heartwood carries load perfectly well even where the sapwood has gone, and the usual answer is to trim onto a sound section or to sister a new member alongside the old one rather than to take anything out. Finding it at survey rather than on the second morning is why the survey is done from inside the roof as well as outside.
Barns, cartlodges and stables that became houses
The parish has a good number of converted farm buildings, and they behave differently from houses. A barn roof is a large uninterrupted slope on heavy principal rafters and purlins, with a floor inserted at some point in the last forty years and very little natural light on the long elevations because there were never windows there.
That combination makes glass in the roof the main daylight strategy rather than an addition to it. Openings can be generous because the structure is heavy, and a rhythm of units set between principals usually reads better than one large opening cut through them. Where the conversion carried a planning condition limiting new openings, and many do, the condition is checked against the address before a layout is drawn.
The valley floor, and how it differs from the ridge above
Little Baddow runs from the Danbury ridge down to the Chelmer and the Navigation at Paper Mill Lock, so the parish covers close to a hundred metres of height in under two miles. The bottom of that range is a different site from the top. Sheltered, damper, slower to dry, prone to river mist on still autumn mornings, and considerably less exposed to wind than the exposed ridge positions at Danbury.
Lower exposure eases the fixing and lapping regime. Persistent damp does the opposite for anything organic on the roof, so moss growth on the north side of a covering is heavier down here, and the drainage route around an upstand closes faster. The specification follows the position of the individual house, not the postcode.
Single track lanes and the scaffold that has to reach them
Access is the practical constraint that surprises people most. Church Road, Spring Elms Lane and the lanes off North Hill are single track with passing places, some with soft verges over ditches, and several houses are approached by a shared gravel drive with no turning space at the end.
A scaffold lorry that cannot turn has to reverse, and a lorry mounted platform needs firm level standing within reach of the elevation. Where neither is available the scaffold is carried in by hand, which is a longer day and appears in the figure. Ground protection over soft ground and over any root protection area is arranged in advance. All of this is resolved at survey, which is one of the reasons the fixed price differs from the first range.
Power to an opening unit in an old house
An electric opening unit earns its place where the glass is out of reach, and in a barn conversion or a house with a full height room that is most of them. The wiring is the part worth thinking about early.
In a modern house a cable is run at first fix and forgotten. In a timber framed building there are no stud voids to drop through, the ceilings may be lath and plaster, and chasing historic fabric is not an option on a listed building. The realistic routes are along the top of a purlin behind a later lining, through an existing service void, or surface run in a discreet conduit agreed in advance. A solar powered unit with its own panel avoids the question entirely and is often the neater answer here.
Collars, ceiling lines and where a unit can finish
In an old roof the internal ceiling rarely follows the rafters cleanly. There may be a collar at head height, a tie beam crossing the room, or a flat ceiling with a short slope either side. Any of those can sit exactly where a rooflight was going to land.
Set a unit too high and it finishes above the collar, lighting the void rather than the room. Set it too low and it disappears behind the head of the reveal. The position is therefore measured from inside first, with the head of the opening kept clear of the collar and the sill high enough to clear a knee wall, and only then transferred to the outside of the roof. On an irregular roof that transfer is a measured exercise rather than a tape and a guess.
Making good a covering that cannot be bought
The last part of the job is the part that decides how the work reads from the garden. Hand made tiles, reclaimed slates and old peg tiles all vary in gauge, thickness and colour, and a modern equivalent laid in beside them is visible for a decade.
The working method is to over-strip slightly, keep everything sound, and hold a small reserve of matched stock from the same roof for future use. Where an old unit is being replaced into an existing opening, the surrounding covering is usually disturbed less, which is one reason a like for like replacement is often a single day while a new opening in the same roof is two.
How a Little Baddow enquiry runs
Two figures, in order. A range by email once the room, the roof plane and the covering are known, then a fixed written price after a survey that has been inside the roof as well as on it. Where the building is listed or designated, the consent position is established before a unit is specified, and the Building Control notification is handled as part of the job.
Sunspire travels to the parish from Chelmsford; the neighbouring villages on the same lanes, including Sandon and Boreham, run on the same terms, and the full list sits on the areas we cover page. The roof is closed and watertight at the end of every working day, and the workmanship carries a ten year guarantee.
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Near Little Baddow
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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.
- Surveyed before it is priced
- 10-year workmanship guarantee
- Building Control notification handled
- New installations and replacements