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 Moulsham
Inner suburb, Edwardian and interwar terraces. What that means for getting glass into a roof here is the whole of this page.
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In Moulsham
What we install on Moulsham 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 Moulsham roofs
Moulsham is the part of Chelmsford where the streets were laid out before the car, and that shows on every roof job in it. The older streets running off Moulsham Street and New London Road are close packed, mostly Edwardian and late Victorian, with narrow frontages and continuous roof runs shared between four or six houses at a time. Further out, the interwar streets loosen up. Further out again, Moulsham Lodge is a planned postwar estate with a completely different roof.
The layout matters more here than in the outer villages. Access, boundaries and what the street can see decide as much as the covering does. Sunspire fits new rooflights across all three parts of Moulsham and replaces units that have come to the end of their working life, travelling to the plot.
- 01 Three ages of Moulsham, and the roof that goes with each
- 02 Bay fronted terraces and their roof geometry
- 03 What the street can see, and where consent bites
- 04 Headroom, purlins and collars in an Edwardian loft
- 05 Dormer or rooflight in a Moulsham conversion
- 06 The escape route once the loft becomes a bedroom
- 07 Where two terrace roofs meet at the boundary
- 08 Chimney stacks and the clearance they need
- 09 Scaffolding a street with no rear access
- 10 Highway licences and the working day on a Moulsham street
- 11 Moulsham Lodge and the postwar estate roof
- 12 Flat roofs over Moulsham additions and garages
- 13 Light in a narrow room
- 14 Which way the Moulsham streets face
- 15 Notification, and the paperwork a sale asks for
- 16 What a Moulsham survey records, and how the price lands
Three ages of Moulsham, and the roof that goes with each
The pattern is legible from the pavement. Late Victorian and Edwardian terraces close to Moulsham Street, with steep pitches, natural slate or small plain tile, and a back addition running off the rear. Interwar semis and short terraces beyond them, hipped, at a generous pitch, under a clay or early concrete tile. Then Moulsham Lodge, built from the late nineteen forties, laid out with open frontages and covered in a large format interlocking tile at a much shallower angle.
Each of the three sets a different limit. The Edwardian roofs limit you on access and on what the street can see. The interwar roofs are the most forgiving. The Lodge estate roofs limit you on pitch.
Bay fronted terraces and their roof geometry
The classic Moulsham terrace has a bay to the front, a steep main roof running front to back across the whole terrace, and a lower two storey back addition. Main pitches sit around forty to forty five degrees, which is generous.
That steepness is an advantage and a complication at once. A flashing on a forty five degree slope is working comfortably within its design, so the weathering is rarely the difficult part. What is difficult is that a steep pitch and a narrow plan mean the roof space is tall and thin. A window low on the slope gives a view out; the same window a metre higher gives a bright ceiling and nothing else. That decision is made on the section drawing, not on the elevation.
What the street can see, and where consent bites
Parts of Moulsham fall inside a conservation area, and the New London Road villas include buildings listed in their own right. The consistent rule of thumb across the whole of it is that the front slope is treated more carefully than the rear.
On a front slope visible from the pavement, the expectation is a flush unit in the plane of the covering, dark framed, with a central vertical glazing bar so it reads as a historic light rather than a modern insertion. A conservation rooflight does exactly that. Rear slopes over back gardens are usually given more latitude, but the terraces here are long and a rear slope can be visible from a side road, so the check is worth making before a size is settled.
Headroom, purlins and collars in an Edwardian loft
Before any of the exterior questions matter, the loft has to be capable of carrying a room. Edwardian roofs here are cut, with a purlin partway up each slope and often a collar tying the rafters near the top.
The purlin is the thing to look at. It usually sits at about the height a person’s shoulder would be if they stood beside it, and it can be repositioned or supported differently as part of a conversion, but not ignored. The collar sets the ceiling height at the centre. Where a room is being formed, a rooflight is placed in the slope below the purlin so the reveal lands on the sloping ceiling rather than being interrupted by a timber crossing it.
Dormer or rooflight in a Moulsham conversion
Both work on this stock and they solve different problems. A rooflight adds daylight without changing the outline of the building, keeps the roof plane unbroken, and installs in a day.
A dormer adds floor area with full standing height, which a rooflight cannot do. The usual outcome on a Moulsham terrace is a rear dormer for headroom and a rooflight in the front slope for light and for the escape route, since the front slope is where consent is tightest and a flush unit is what will be accepted there. Where the loft is being left as a loft rather than converted, one or two roof windows in the rear slope is the whole job.
The escape route once the loft becomes a bedroom
Turning a Moulsham loft into a habitable room brings Part B into play, and on a terrace it is more involved than on a detached house because the escape route runs down through the building.
Where a window serves as the means of escape it needs a clear opening large enough to climb through with neither dimension too small, and the bottom of that opening has to sit low enough above the finished floor to be usable. On a steep Edwardian slope that is achievable, which is one of the few places the geometry here helps. A top hung unit that swings clear of the opening is the usual choice, and it is specified at design stage because the escape unit cannot be swapped in later without redoing the reveal.
The escape window is a structural decision, so it belongs on the drawing rather than in the second fix.
Where two terrace roofs meet at the boundary
A Moulsham terrace roof is one continuous covering crossing several ownerships, usually with a party wall running up to or just above the tiles. That has a practical consequence for a rooflight.
An opening needs a working margin of covering between its frame and the wall so the side flashing has something to sit on and be dressed into. Placing a unit hard against a boundary leaves nowhere for that flashing to go. In practice the unit is set at least a couple of tile widths clear of the party line, which usually means it sits slightly off centre in the room below. Splaying the internal reveal towards the middle of the room recovers most of that visually.
Chimney stacks and the clearance they need
Moulsham roofs still carry a lot of stacks, either on the party line or at the gable, and they occupy exactly the part of the slope people tend to want.
Two clearances apply. Horizontally, the unit needs enough tiling between its frame and the stack for a side flashing and for the stack’s own lead soakers to run past without conflict. Vertically, a rooflight below a stack sits in the path of water shedding off the stack’s back gutter, so it wants to be well clear of that flow rather than immediately under it. Where a stack is redundant and being taken down, doing that before the rooflight goes in makes the roof simpler and the finished slope tidier.
Scaffolding a street with no rear access
This is the single biggest difference between working in Moulsham and working in the outer villages. A large number of the older terraces have no vehicle route to the rear at all, and sometimes no pedestrian route either beyond a shared alley.
Where that is the case, a rear scaffold is built from the front, carried through a shared entry or over a garden wall, and the same is true of every tile, every length of timber and every bag of waste. It is entirely normal work and it takes longer than a plot with a driveway. It is established at survey and priced then, because access is the line item that varies most across this postcode.
Highway licences and the working day on a Moulsham street
A scaffold standing on a public footway needs a licence from the highway authority, and on the busier Moulsham streets a permit or suspension may be needed for the vehicle that delivers it.
That takes lead time, so it is applied for once a date is agreed rather than in the week of the install. Parking is the other constraint. On streets with residents’ parking and no off street space, materials are delivered to a timed slot and the working day starts around it. None of this changes the roof work. It changes the calendar, and a date given before the licence is in hand is not a real date.
Moulsham Lodge and the postwar estate roof
Moulsham Lodge is a different build entirely: laid out from the late nineteen forties, with open frontages, shallower roofs and a large format interlocking concrete tile. Pitches commonly sit between twenty two and thirty degrees, well below the terraces up the road.
That pitch is usually still within the range a centre pivot roof window is warranted for, but it is closer to the limit, so the flashing kit and the apron length matter more. The tiles themselves are now decades old, and concrete of that age loses its surface and starts to fret. Tiles lifted around an opening often will not go back, so matching stock is set aside from a discreet area of the slope before the opening is formed.
Flat roofs over Moulsham additions and garages
Almost every part of Moulsham has flat roofs somewhere: over back additions on the terraces, over kitchen extensions on the interwar semis, and over the attached garages and stores on the Lodge estate.
These are typically small, often between six and fifteen square metres, and a small roof is unforgiving about drainage. A flush unit sits on a kerb built to one hundred and fifty millimetres above the finished surface, which is the sum of how deep water can stand before it finds an edge and how far wind can drive it up a vertical face. On a small roof draining to a single outlet, a unit dropped centrally sits across the flow line, so the position is worked out from the drainage and the firrings adjusted where the position has to win.
Light in a narrow room
A two up two down through room in Moulsham is often only three and a half metres wide with windows at one end. Daylight falls off quickly with depth, and the middle of the room is the part that never gets any.
Overhead glass fixes that in a way a wall window cannot, because a rooflight sees the whole dome of the sky rather than a slice of it. The working rule is glazing at fifteen to twenty per cent of the floor area below, and in a narrow room it is better spent as two smaller openings spread along the length than as one large one at the far end. Two units also keep the structural intervention smaller, which matters when the joists run the short way across a narrow plan.
Which way the Moulsham streets face
The older street grid runs in a fairly consistent direction, so a whole terrace tends to share an aspect and neighbours can compare notes usefully. The Lodge estate curves, so it does not.
| Rear slope or roof faces | What the room gets | Specification call |
|---|---|---|
| North east | Even light, no direct glare | Neutral glass, larger area workable |
| South east | Bright mornings, settled afternoons | Neutral to light solar control |
| South west | Long afternoon gain in summer | Solar control glass, blind ordered with the unit |
| Flat roof over a back addition | Sky from horizon to horizon, no shading | Solar control as standard, opening unit for heat release |
Notification, and the paperwork a sale asks for
New rooflights and replacements are notifiable work 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 escape from a habitable room.
Sunspire handles the notification as part of the job. On a terrace there is a second piece of paperwork worth thinking about early: work affecting a party wall, or excavation near one, can trigger a notice to the neighbour. A rooflight on its own usually does not, but a loft conversion that puts new beams into a party wall does, and the two projects tend to arrive together.
What a Moulsham survey records, and how the price lands
A range is given by email from photographs and a measurement. A fixed price follows a survey, because on this stock the access and the boundary conditions are worth more than any guess made from a photograph.
The survey records the covering and its condition, the measured pitch, the purlin and collar positions, the party wall line, the internal ceiling height, the orientation, and the route materials will take in and out. The recurring finds here are a rear slope with no scaffold route, a stack sitting exactly where the light was wanted, and a back addition flat roof laid with no usable fall. Moulsham sits with the rest of the county on the areas we cover page, and the costs guide sets out 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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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