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 Sandon
Small parish, modern estate edge. What that means for getting glass into a roof here is the whole of this page.
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In Sandon
What we install on Sandon 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 Sandon roofs
Sandon is a small parish that sits directly against the eastern edge of Chelmsford, and that position explains most of the rooflight work in it. The old village around the green is tiny. Everything else in the parish is either a scatter of houses at Howe Green and Butts Green, or estate housing built between the nineteen fifties and the nineteen eighties on the side facing town.
Those two halves need different work. The village core has hand-laid clay tiles, a conservation area and buildings that predate any of the modern rules. The estate side has trussed roofs, concrete tiles and a straightforward geometry that hides one significant constraint. This page goes through both, and through the ground conditions that quietly affect flat roofs across the whole parish.
- 01 Three settlements in one parish, and the roofs in each
- 02 The green, the oak and the conservation area around them
- 03 St Andrew’s brick tower, and the buildings closest to it
- 04 Plain clay tiles on the oldest Sandon houses
- 05 Where Chelmsford stops and the parish edge begins
- 06 Nineteen fifties and sixties housing off Molrams Lane
- 07 What it takes to alter a trussed roof legitimately
- 08 Detached houses at Howe Green and Butts Green
- 09 Sandon Brook, shrinkable clay and roofs that have moved
- 10 Flat roofed additions on ground that shifts
- 11 Traffic from the interchange, and the glazing that answers it
- 12 Which way a Sandon roof faces, and what that changes
- 13 Turning a Sandon loft into a room, and what the roof has to give
- 14 Where a scaffold stands on a Sandon plot
- 15 The notification that goes with a Sandon install
- 16 Getting a Sandon roof surveyed and priced
Three settlements in one parish, and the roofs in each
Sandon village, Howe Green and Butts Green are three separate places that share a parish boundary. Sandon village has the church, the green and a short run of older cottages. Howe Green sits south towards the A130 and is mostly twentieth century detached housing on generous plots. Butts Green is looser again, part lane-side houses, part smallholding.
The coverings track that history. Plain red clay tiles on the oldest buildings, slate on a few Victorian additions, concrete interlocking tiles on almost everything built after nineteen fifty, and felt or single ply membrane on the rear additions and garages. A survey establishes the covering first, because it decides the weathering method before anyone talks about a product.
The green, the oak and the conservation area around them
The centre of the old village is designated, and the designation is drawn tightly around the green and the buildings that face it. That has a practical effect on the roof slopes visible from the green itself, which are treated with more care than slopes facing away into gardens.
In practice a front slope facing the green points towards a slim flush unit in a dark finish with a central glazing bar, while the rear slope on the same house has far more latitude. Sunspire agrees the position and the product with the planning officer before ordering rather than after. The same approach applies across the district, and the full picture sits on the areas we cover page.
St Andrew’s brick tower, and the buildings closest to it
The church tower is Tudor red brick with stepped buttresses, and the buildings nearest it borrow the same palette. Soft red brick, clay tile, low eaves. Roof pitches around the church end run steep, commonly forty degrees and above, which is helpful. A steep slope sheds water quickly and puts less demand on a flashing than a shallow one does.
Where a building near the church is listed, a second consent runs alongside planning and covers alteration to the character of the fabric. A new opening in a historic roof qualifies. The case is far easier to argue when the opening is framed off common rafters and leaves the primary timbers alone.
On a protected building, the position is agreed before the unit is ordered, never the other way round.
Plain clay tiles on the oldest Sandon houses
Plain clay tiles are small, double lapped and individually cambered, so each course sits on the two below it. Lifting them to form an opening is slow and some of them break, particularly on a roof where the tiles have been weathering for a hundred years and the nibs have gone soft.
The survey allows for that. Tiles are lifted, stacked and re-laid, with a wastage allowance and a source of matching reclaimed stock identified in advance. New tiles beside old ones are obvious from the ground for years. At the opening itself the answer is generally dressed lead worked into each course rather than a pressed kit, because a kit assumes a uniform tile and an old clay roof is not uniform.
Where Chelmsford stops and the parish edge begins
The western side of the parish runs straight into the built edge of Chelmsford, and the housing there was built as part of the town’s outward growth rather than as village infill. Semi detached and short terraced blocks, hipped or gabled, concrete tiles, shallow to medium pitch.
This stock is well suited to rooflight work. The roofs are regular, the pitches are within every manufacturer’s published range, and the flashing kits are made for exactly these tiles. Neighbouring Great Baddow has the same generation of housing in larger quantity, and the detailing carries across the boundary without change.
Nineteen fifties and sixties housing off Molrams Lane
Houses of this generation usually have a traditional cut roof: rafters, purlins and binders assembled on site. That is good news for openings. A cut roof can be trimmed. Rafters either side of the opening are doubled, a trimmer goes in at head and sill, and the load takes a new path down to the wall plate.
What the survey checks is rafter depth. A nineteen fifties roof frequently has rafters around one hundred millimetres deep, which is fine structurally but leaves almost nothing for insulation between them if the loft is being converted. That pushes the build-up either above or below the rafters and changes the reveal depth inside the room.
What it takes to alter a trussed roof legitimately
Estate housing from the late sixties onward uses prefabricated trussed rafters, and a truss is an engineered triangle where every member is in tension or compression. The diagonal webs are not spare timber. Cutting one transfers load into members that were never sized for it.
The clear space between webs on a standard truss is often around six hundred millimetres, which suits a narrow tall roof window and nothing wider. Where a larger opening is genuinely needed, the answer is a designed alteration: a structural engineer specifies a supporting frame that picks up the cut members and carries their load to the wall plates, and that drawing goes to Building Control with the notification. It is achievable, it is a different job, and it is planned before anything is ordered.
Detached houses at Howe Green and Butts Green
The detached stock south and east of the village tends to have a more complicated roof: hips, valleys, a projecting gable over the garage, sometimes a later two storey side addition with its own ridge. More planes means more junctions, and junctions are where water finds a way in.
The rule applied on these roofs is to keep glass in the middle of a clear plane. A rooflight needs a clear margin of tiles above, below and to each side so the flashing can develop a proper lap. Set too close to a hip or a valley, the flashing runs out of tile before it runs out of water. On a complex roof the best position for daylight and the best position for weathering are usually not the same, and the survey settles the trade.
Sandon Brook, shrinkable clay and roofs that have moved
Sandon Brook runs through the parish and the ground either side is London Clay. Shrinkable clay moves with the seasons, more so where mature trees are close to a foundation, and the movement shows up first in the newest and lightest part of the building.
On a single storey rear addition that generally means the roof has lost a little of its fall. It is rarely dramatic. It is enough that water no longer reaches the outlet, and standing water sitting against a kerb will find whatever weakness exists in the detail below it. A survey checks the fall with a level before anything else on a flat roof in this parish.
Flat roofed additions on ground that shifts
Where the fall has gone, the fall is corrected before glass goes in. Tapered insulation laid to a designed fall is the usual method, giving a minimum of one in eighty after deflection so that the roof still drains when the deck has taken up its load.
The kerb around the opening then sits proud of the finished surface by at least one hundred and fifty millimetres, with the membrane dressed up the outside face and terminated under the frame. Water is directed around the kerb and away to the outlet, not held against it. A flat roof rooflight put into a roof that ponds is a decision that returns.
Traffic from the interchange, and the glazing that answers it
The A12 and A130 meet at the edge of the parish and the noise carries a long way across open ground, especially on a still evening. Houses at Howe Green and along the southern lanes sit within earshot, and a rooflight in a bedroom ceiling is a direct path for that sound.
The glazing choice matters more than the frame. A sealed unit with two panes of different thickness, say six millimetres against four, breaks up the coincidence dip so the two panes do not resonate at the same frequency. An acoustic laminate interlayer in the outer pane does more again. The acoustic glazing guide sets out the figures behind that.
Which way a Sandon roof faces, and what that changes
The older village is built around the green rather than along a grid, so slope orientation varies house by house. The estate housing on the Chelmsford side is more regular, with long terraces and semis running roughly north to south, giving one east facing slope and one west facing.
East facing glass gives strong early light and cools off by afternoon, which suits a bedroom. West facing glass delivers low evening sun that comes in at a shallow angle and can be uncomfortable in a kitchen at the end of a summer day. South facing slopes take a solar control coating as standard, and the trade offs are covered on the energy efficient rooflights page.
Turning a Sandon loft into a room, and what the roof has to give
Sandon is a commuting parish, with the park and ride on its doorstep and the A12 running past, and the usual result is pressure on floor space. A loft conversion is the common answer, and the roof has to supply three things: head height, a means of escape and daylight.
Head height is the one that decides feasibility. Measure from the existing ceiling joists to the underside of the ridge before doing anything else, and remember the new floor structure and the insulation build-up will both eat into it. For escape, a roof window in a habitable loft room needs an unobstructed openable area of at least 0.33 square metres, at least 450 millimetres in each direction, with the bottom of the opening between 800 and 1100 millimetres above the floor.
Where a scaffold stands on a Sandon plot
Access varies more here than the roofs do. The lanes at Butts Green have no footway and soft verges that will not take a delivery lorry after rain. The estate streets on the Chelmsford side have parking down both sides. The larger Howe Green plots usually have room for everything on the drive.
The survey establishes where the scaffold stands, whether the ground will carry it, how material gets to the back of the house, and where the stripped covering is stacked while the roof is open. The roof is never left open overnight. On a village lane an early start and a lorry that cannot turn round is a real problem, so the logistics go into the fixed figure rather than being discovered on the morning.
The notification that goes with a Sandon install
The parish falls under Chelmsford City Council for both planning and Building Control. A new opening formed in a roof is notifiable work under the Building Regulations, because it involves structural alteration to the roof and a new thermal element.
The relevant standards are Part A for the trimming, Part L for the U-value of the unit, Part F where ventilation is affected and Part B where the room is a habitable loft. Sunspire handles the notification as part of the job. Replacement of an existing unit in the same opening is a narrower case and is dealt with on the skylight replacement page.
Getting a Sandon roof surveyed and priced
Sunspire works to two figures. A range by email once the basics are understood, then a fixed written price after a survey, with the Building Control notification included. Sunspire travels to Sandon from Chelmsford, a short run either along Molrams Lane or off the A130.
The quickest way to a useful range is a photograph of the roof slope from the garden, a photograph of the ceiling or loft space from inside, the approximate room dimensions and a note of what the room is for. Where the house is near the green or listed, a note of that too, since it changes the sequence. General cost drivers apply here as anywhere, with access and roof structure carrying the most weight.
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