Roof Lantern Installation
Flat-roof glazing sized to the room and detailed into the kerb below it.
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Uttlesford
Rooflight installation in Stansted Mountfitchet
Airport-adjacent, noise and mixed stock. What that means for getting glass into a roof here is the whole of this page.
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In Stansted Mountfitchet
What we install on Stansted Mountfitchet 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 Stansted Mountfitchet roofs
Every rooflight specification in Stansted Mountfitchet has one extra input that most Essex villages do not: what is happening overhead. The airport sits a couple of miles south, the M11 runs along the western edge, and the West Anglia main line goes straight through the middle of the village. Three separate noise sources, all of them relevant to a piece of glass set into a roof plane facing upward.
The stock is mixed with it. There is a genuine old village on Chapel Hill, Lower Street and Silver Street, with timber frames and a conservation area over them. There are Victorian terraces built for the railway. There are interwar and post-war semis, and there are estates from the seventies through to the present, put up as the village became a commuter base. Sunspire travels out from Chelmsford, around twenty five miles east, as one of the western edges of the Essex area covered.
- 01 Three noise sources, and which one your roof hears
- 02 What glass actually does about noise from above
- 03 Ventilation when you would rather not open the roof
- 04 Insulation schemes, and matching what has already been done
- 05 The old village on Chapel Hill and Lower Street
- 06 Article 4, and the slope that faces the street
- 07 Railway terraces, and the roofs above them
- 08 Working on a street with a level crossing on it
- 09 Interwar and post-war semis on the village edges
- 10 Nineteen seventies onward, and the truss that caps the width
- 11 Attic trusses, and the houses built with a room already in the roof
- 12 Solar panels, and the roof plane they already occupy
- 13 Flat roofs on rear extensions, and what the deck is made of
- 14 Rain noise, and why it is not the same problem as aircraft
- 15 Uttlesford Building Control, and the paperwork at the end
- 16 Starting a Stansted Mountfitchet enquiry
Three noise sources, and which one your roof hears
They behave differently and it is worth separating them. Aircraft noise is intermittent, comes from directly above, and changes with the wind because departures and arrivals swap ends of the runway. Motorway noise is continuous, arrives roughly horizontally from the west, and is worst overnight when the traffic is heavy goods. Rail noise is short, sharp and predictable.
A roof plane is exposed to all three but most exposed to the first, because it faces the source directly with nothing in the way. A wall has a house behind it and often a hedge or a fence in front. A rooflight has open sky above it, which is exactly why the glazing specification is worth thinking about before the size is chosen.
What glass actually does about noise from above
Two specification choices do the work, and neither can be added after the unit is made.
Laminated glass in the outer pane is the first. The plastic interlayer absorbs vibration that a solid pane transmits straight through, and it damps drumming in the mid frequencies where aircraft sit. The second is asymmetry: making the two panes different thicknesses so they resonate at different frequencies rather than reinforcing each other. A unit with, say, a six millimetre laminated outer and a four millimetre inner performs noticeably better than a symmetrical unit of the same overall thickness. The cavity width matters too, and wider is better up to a point.
Ventilation when you would rather not open the roof
This is the problem specific to the village and it is the one worth solving properly. An opening rooflight is the natural way to vent a room, because warm air collects at the highest point and an opening at roof level lets it leave while cooler air is drawn in lower down. That is the stack effect and it moves a real volume of air with no power at all.
Under a flight path, on a July evening, a lot of households would rather not have it open. The way round it is to reduce the need. Solar control glass cuts the gain that made the room hot in the first place. Disciplined sizing does the same. Background ventilation elsewhere in the room, or a mechanical system where one already exists, covers the rest. The opener then becomes something used on quiet afternoons rather than the only cooling strategy the room has.
Under a flight path the glazing choice is made once at order, and every later option is a compromise around it.
Insulation schemes, and matching what has already been done
Properties within the airport’s published noise contours have in many cases had glazing work done under a noise insulation scheme, usually to the windows and sometimes with acoustic ventilation units fitted alongside.
Where that has happened it sets a benchmark. There is little sense in a room with acoustically upgraded windows gaining a rooflight in standard glass, because the weakest element sets the result and the roof is the most exposed surface in the room. Matching or bettering the existing specification is the sensible default, and it is a question worth asking at survey rather than after the unit arrives.
The old village on Chapel Hill and Lower Street
The historic core runs up Chapel Hill and along Lower Street and Silver Street, with timber-framed and colourwashed buildings, some listed, and a conservation area over the older frontages.
Coverings here are handmade clay plain tile at steep pitches, with some slate from later re-covering. The flashing works with soakers dressed between the tile courses rather than an apron over a profile, and on a handmade roof each soaker is cut to the tiles actually present. Old peg tile breaks in handling, so matching salvage is on site before the covering is opened rather than sought halfway through.
Article 4, and the slope that faces the street
Inside the conservation area an Article 4 direction can remove permitted development rights, so a rooflight that would need no application elsewhere requires one here. The test the district applies is the effect on the character and appearance of the area, and it turns on visibility.
Chapel Hill is steep, which complicates that. A rear slope on a hillside street is not automatically hidden, because the ground drops away and the roof can be read from below or from the opposite side of the road in a way it would not be on flat ground. Working out the genuine sightlines before an application goes in is worth the effort. Where consent is granted on a historic slope the specification is normally a conservation rooflight, flush in a slim cast frame with a central glazing bar.
Railway terraces, and the roofs above them
The station brought housing with it, and the Victorian and Edwardian terraces around Cambridge Road and the Chapel Hill approach are typical of the type: two storey main range, slate at a low thirties pitch, cut timber structure with purlins, and a back wing running down the garden.
Slate takes a low profile kit dressed tight and is stripped in whole courses with a ripper rather than levered out individually. The structure below trims freely, which makes these easier roofs to work on than anything trussed. The back wing is where the light is needed, because the room at the end of it is the darkest in the house and usually the kitchen.
Working on a street with a level crossing on it
Access in the older part of the village is genuinely awkward and it moves a figure more than most people expect. Chapel Hill is narrow and steep, the level crossing controls traffic through the middle of the village, and several frontages sit directly on the footway with no verge and no rear access.
Where a scaffold has to stand on or over the highway, a licence from Essex County Council is required and it has a lead time. Where a plot has a driveway or a side gate, materials go up and waste comes down without anybody noticing. Which of those applies is settled at survey, because it changes both the price and the earliest realistic start date.
Interwar and post-war semis on the village edges
Between the old core and the modern estates sits a band of interwar and post-war housing, much of it hipped, in plain clay tile or early concrete tile, on purlin roofs with a loft that has usable headroom through the middle third.
Hipped roofs give less usable slope than a gable roof of the same footprint, because two of the four planes taper to a point and the rafters at the corners are short. The workable area is the middle of the main slope, which is also where a conversion puts the head height. A roof window here is straightforward work: the covering is consistent, the kit is available for the profile, and the ceiling below is a known quantity.
Nineteen seventies onward, and the truss that caps the width
The commuter growth of the village happened mostly from the nineteen seventies, and everything from that point is likely to be trussed rafter construction with concrete interlocking tile.
A truss is engineered, with the webs and bottom chord carrying load in tension and compression, and cutting one is not equivalent to cutting a rafter. So a roof window is sized to fit between two trusses, and at six hundred millimetre centres that caps the structural opening at around five hundred and fifty millimetres. A wider opening is achievable where a structural engineer designs the trimming, which adds a calculation and time. Two narrower units in adjacent bays usually delivers more usable daylight anyway.
Attic trusses, and the houses built with a room already in the roof
Some of the later estate housing in the village used attic trusses, which are designed from the outset with a clear central span so the roof space is habitable without further structural work.
These are worth identifying early because they change the answer completely. An attic truss roof will usually accept a properly sized roof window between the truss frames without an engineer, the floor is already designed to carry a room, and the ceiling line is set by the truss rather than by a later alteration. Recognising one from the loft hatch saves a structural conversation that was never necessary.
Solar panels, and the roof plane they already occupy
A good deal of village housing has gained roof mounted solar over the last fifteen years, and it is almost always on the south facing plane, which is the same plane a homeowner later wants glass in.
Panels are removable and remountable, but the array has a fixing pattern into the rafters and a cable route, and both have to be worked around rather than through. The practical order is to plan the rooflight position against the existing array before anything is ordered, and to accept that the panels come off and go back as a separate operation within the programme. Where the array covers the whole plane, the honest answer is often a unit on the other slope with a splayed reveal to carry the light across.
Flat roofs on rear extensions, and what the deck is made of
The rear extension is the most common piece of building work in the village and the roof over it is flat: felt, single ply or GRP. This is where lanterns and flush units go.
Two things get measured first. The fall, designed at a minimum of 1:80 to allow for deflection and construction tolerance, which plenty of older decks never achieved. And the deck itself, because chipboard beneath a covering laid over twice is not a surface to build a kerb on. Where water stands for more than two days after rain, that is dealt with before a flat rooflight goes anywhere near it.
Rain noise, and why it is not the same problem as aircraft
People conflate the two and they behave differently. Aircraft noise is airborne and arrives as pressure on the glass. Rain noise is impact, generated at the surface, and it is loudest on a flat or shallow unit where the drops land square on.
The same two specification choices help with both, which is convenient. A laminated outer pane damps impact as well as airborne sound, and asymmetric panes break up the resonance rather than reinforcing it. On a steep pitched roof window the problem is smaller to begin with, because rain strikes the glass at an angle and glances off. On a flush unit over a quiet room it is worth specifying for.
Uttlesford Building Control, and the paperwork at the end
Fitting a new rooflight or replacing an existing unit is notifiable work under the Building Regulations in England, engaging Part L for thermal performance, Part K where there is a risk of falling, and Part B where the opening serves as a means of escape.
Sunspire handles that notification as part of the job. It matters more than it sounds, because an unnotified alteration surfaces years later during a sale when a buyer’s solicitor asks for a completion certificate that nobody obtained. Neighbouring work in Bishop’s Stortford falls the other side of the county boundary and goes through a different authority.
Starting a Stansted Mountfitchet enquiry
Four answers get an enquiry moving faster than anything else. What the covering is. What the pitch is, measured rather than guessed. Which way the roof plane faces. And what is holding it up, cut timber or trussed. Add to that whether the address sits inside the conservation area and whether noise is a live concern for the room in question.
Sunspire quotes in two stages, a range by email once those basics are known and a fixed written figure after a survey. For the range, a photograph of the roof from outside, one of the ceiling from inside and a rough room size is usually enough, and the general ground on what drives the price is covered separately.
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