Roof Lantern Installation
Flat-roof glazing sized to the room and detailed into the kerb below it.
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Suffolk
Rooflight installation in Sudbury
Silk town, listed core, over the border. What that means for getting glass into a roof here is the whole of this page.
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In Sudbury
What we install on Sudbury 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
17 things worth knowing about Sudbury roofs
Sudbury is over the river and over the county line, and both of those change the job before anything is measured. The town is Suffolk, the planning authority is Babergh, and the Stour that runs along its southern edge is the Essex boundary. Sunspire travels up from Chelmsford, roughly twenty six miles by road, and Sudbury sits at the north eastern reach of the area covered.
What follows is the town as a roof job finds it. A protected medieval and Georgian core around three churches, a silk industry that is still working, streets of weavers’ housing, water meadows that come right up to the back of the town, and a covering that turns up here far more often than it does anywhere on the Essex side of the river.
- 01 Suffolk, Babergh, and a job over the Stour
- 02 Pantiles, and why the flashing changes at the border
- 03 Low pitches, and what a pantile roof will actually take
- 04 Weavers’ windows, and a town that already understood daylight
- 05 The silk mills, and the roofs above the looms
- 06 Market Hill, and what the conservation area covers
- 07 Listed buildings, and the consent that comes before the order
- 08 Colourwashed lime render, and what it will not take
- 09 The common lands, and ground that will not carry a tower
- 10 Ballingdon, and the roofs on the south bank
- 11 The nineteenth century streets above the town
- 12 Post-war Sudbury and the Great Cornard side
- 13 What a nineteen seventies Sudbury roof allows
- 14 Single storey rears, and the deck under the covering
- 15 Upstand height in the Stour valley
- 16 Which way a Sudbury slope faces, and the glass that follows
- 17 Consent, notification and getting a Sudbury price
Suffolk, Babergh, and a job over the Stour
Nothing physical changes at the river. The administration changes entirely. Babergh District Council is the planning authority, its validation requirements govern an application, and any direction removing permitted development rights across the town is a Babergh direction with its own wording.
The Building Regulations notification follows the same route, into Suffolk rather than into any Essex authority, and Sunspire handles it as part of the job. Owners often compare notes with family a few miles south in Essex and get an answer that does not apply. The position for a specific address is established at the start, because it decides whether the sequence is design, apply, order, or simply design and order.
Pantiles, and why the flashing changes at the border
Clay pantiles are the covering that marks Sudbury out. They appear across Suffolk far more than they do in most of Essex, in red and in the black glazed version, and they behave nothing like a plain tile.
A pantile is a single lap covering with a deep S profile, so it carries one thickness of tile where a plain tile roof carries two or three, and the weathering depends on the roll rather than on the overlap of courses. That rules out soakers dressed between courses, because there are no courses to dress between. The flashing has to be a deep profile kit whose apron follows the roll and the trough, and the head lap has to be preserved right up to the opening. A shallow kit laid over a pantile roof bridges the troughs and leaves a route straight under the covering.
Low pitches, and what a pantile roof will actually take
Pantile roofs often run shallower than the tiled roofs further south, and pitch is the first measurement taken rather than the first estimated.
Most roof window manufacturers set a minimum of around fifteen degrees, some will warrant from ten with a specific underlay detail below the unit, and below that the weathering is not stood behind. Clay pantiles themselves are usually laid from around thirty degrees, so the pitch is rarely the obstacle on a historic Sudbury roof. It becomes one on the shallow post-war roofs on the edges of the town, where a slope measured with an angle gauge sometimes comes back several degrees below what everyone assumed.
Weavers’ windows, and a town that already understood daylight
Sudbury worked cloth long before it worked silk, and hand loom weaving needed light at the loom. Where a cottage was built or altered for that work the upper floor carries a long range of windows across the front, sometimes a continuous run, because the weaver had to see the thread.
That history is useful in a conversation about a rooflight, because the argument is the same one and the town settled it two hundred years ago. Daylight from above reaches further into a plan than daylight from a wall, and it arrives without depending on what the neighbour has built. On these buildings the front elevation with its long windows is the part that is protected, which points any new glass at the rear slope, where it belongs anyway.
The silk mills, and the roofs above the looms
Silk weaving is still a working industry in Sudbury and the mill buildings are part of the town’s fabric, some in use and some converted to flats and workspace.
A weaving shed roof is a different animal from a house roof. Wide spans on trusses at generous centres, close boarding under the covering, and frequently existing roof glazing, because the looms needed even light and the standard nineteenth century answer was a north facing glazed slope. Where one of these buildings has been converted, the existing glazed planes are usually the sensible place to add or replace glass, and the structure is engineered rather than trimmed. The opening is set out to sit inside a bay so that no truss member is touched.
Market Hill, and what the conservation area covers
The designation takes in Market Hill and St Peter’s, runs down Friars Street, Gainsborough Street and Stour Street, and reaches out along the older approaches. It is a large area for a town this size and it includes a great deal of ordinary housing.
The practical effect is procedural. Inside a conservation area a direction can remove permitted development rights, so a rooflight needing no application on a comparable house on the edge of town needs one here. Where consent is required, what tends to be agreed on a visible slope is a conservation pattern unit, flush in the plane of the covering, in a slim dark cast frame with a central glazing bar so it reads as a lead lined opening from the pavement.
Listed buildings, and the consent that comes before the order
The concentration of listing around Market Hill, Friars Street and Stour Street is heavy, and on the oldest buildings the roof carpentry is part of what is designated.
Listed building consent is a separate matter from planning permission, it covers internal alteration as well as external, and a building can need both. Neither is a closed door. What both require is that the order follows the decision notice, because a conservation unit is manufactured to a stated size and a bespoke frame ordered against an assumed dimension has no second use if the approved size differs.
On a designated building the approved size is the size that gets ordered, not the size that was drawn.
Colourwashed lime render, and what it will not take
Suffolk render is a working finish, limewashed in the traditional colours, and on the older buildings it sits over a timber frame with lath behind it.
It will not take a scaffold tie, a ladder foot or an impact, and it does not make good invisibly once damaged. Where a rooflight is going into a slope above a rendered elevation the platform stands free of the wall and ties only into genuinely solid masonry elsewhere, or it goes at the rear entirely. There is a second consequence inside. A lime plaster ceiling below the opening is brittle and moves, so the reveal is formed against it carefully rather than screwed to it.
The common lands, and ground that will not carry a tower
The water meadows come up to the edge of the town on the Stour side and they are grazed, wet and low. Freemen’s Great Common, Kings Marsh and the land towards Brundon are all on it.
Ground like this decides how the roof is reached. A scaffold standard wants a properly spread base rather than a plate dropped onto soft turf, a mobile tower is the wrong tool on a surface that will not stay level, and material deliveries need somewhere firm to stand. Where a plot backs directly onto the meadows the practical answer is often to work off the street side, or to programme the job outside the wettest part of the year.
Ballingdon, and the roofs on the south bank
Ballingdon sits across the Stour and was in Essex until the early twentieth century, when it was transferred to Suffolk. It reads as a separate place and it has a different mix of stock: older cottages along Ballingdon Street, then twentieth century housing climbing the hill behind.
The hill is what matters technically. Ground rising steeply on the south bank means that rear slopes which are invisible from the street are fully visible from higher ground, and visibility is the test a case officer applies. Working out the real sightlines before an application goes in is worth an hour, because it is exactly the objection that appears if nobody has thought about it.
The nineteenth century streets above the town
Sudbury expanded in the nineteenth century up the slopes away from the market, in terraces and semi-detached villas under Welsh slate at pitches in the low thirties.
These are cut roofs with rafters, purlins and struts, and that is good news for anyone wanting a reasonable sized opening, because timber like this can be trimmed. Rafters either side are doubled, trimmers go in above and below and the load is redistributed properly. Slate comes off in whole courses with a ripper rather than being levered out singly, and re-laying wants copper nails and matching salvage held ready before the covering is opened.
Post-war Sudbury and the Great Cornard side
The town grew substantially after the war and again from the nineteen sixties, out towards Great Cornard and on the northern edges. This is where most of the ordinary work is.
Concrete interlocking tile at a pitch in the low to mid thirties, plasterboard ceilings, a usable loft void, and an off the shelf flashing kit for the profile. The kit for a deep interlocking tile is not the kit for a pantile and it is not the kit for a slate, and using the nearest one to hand is how a rooflight ends up with a proud apron and a slow problem three winters later. The covering is identified on the survey and the kit is ordered against it.
What a nineteen seventies Sudbury roof allows
Anything from the mid sixties onward is likely to be a trussed rafter roof, and a truss is an engineered component rather than a piece of carpentry. Its webs and bottom chord carry load in tension and compression and cutting one changes how the whole thing behaves.
With trusses at six hundred millimetre centres the clear bay takes a unit of roughly five hundred and fifty millimetres in width. That is the honest cap unless a structural engineer designs a trimmed opening, which is entirely possible and brings a calculation, a longer lead time and a different Building Control conversation. Two narrower units in adjacent bays deliver the same glass area and spread the light more evenly across a ceiling.
Single storey rears, and the deck under the covering
Almost every Sudbury plot with depth has a single storey rear addition, and the roof over it is flat. That is where a lantern or a flush unit usually ends up.
The survey opens with the deck rather than the product. A chipboard deck under a covering laid over twice will not carry a kerb, and a thin plywood deck that has been damp for years will not either. Then the fall, designed at a minimum of 1:80 to allow for deflection and construction tolerance, which a good many older decks never delivered. Water standing more than a couple of days after rain is dealt with before glass goes anywhere near the roof.
Upstand height in the Stour valley
One hundred and fifty millimetres from the finished roof surface to the top of the kerb is the figure quoted across the trade, and it is derived rather than invented: the depth of water that can lie on a flat roof plus the height wind driven rain can be pushed up a vertical face.
Down in the valley bottom, on the low ground near the meadows where the air is damp and the decks drain slowly, that number is the floor rather than the target. Higher up on the Cornard side, on a plot with a good fall and some shelter, a manufacturer may warrant less. Cutting the height so a unit sits flatter for appearance is invisible once the work is finished and it is the decision that gets regretted.
Which way a Sudbury slope faces, and the glass that follows
Orientation is settled before size. A north facing plane gives even, cool, shadowless light all day with almost no heat gain and will carry a generous area of neutral glass, which is precisely why the weaving sheds glazed their north slopes. A south or west facing plane collects the summer sun at a high angle straight onto the glazing.
Two numbers describe a unit and they pull against each other. The U-value measures heat loss, lower is better, and Building Regulations set the ceiling. The g-value measures the fraction of solar energy that passes through, and lower means less gain and slightly less light. Optimising one and ignoring the other produces a room that is cheap to heat in February and unusable by mid afternoon in August.
Consent, notification and getting a Sudbury price
The order is designation first, then survey, then order. The survey settles the covering and whether salvage is needed, the pitch measured with a gauge, what is holding the roof up, where the internal ceiling line will land, which designations apply, and how material gets up and waste comes down on that street.
Sunspire quotes in two stages, a range by email once the basics are known and a fixed written figure after the visit. For the first, a photograph of the roof from outside, one of the ceiling from inside and a rough room size is enough, and the ground on what drives a price is set out separately. The workmanship carries a ten year guarantee, and the roof is closed and watertight at the end of every working day whatever the forecast has decided to do.
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