Roof Lantern Installation
Flat-roof glazing sized to the room and detailed into the kerb below it.
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Blackwater
Rooflight installation in Tiptree
Large village, postwar expansion. What that means for getting glass into a roof here is the whole of this page.
We travel to Tiptree
10-year guarantee
TiptreeTown covered
BlackwaterWithin
30Mile radius by road
10Year workmanship guarantee
In Tiptree
What we install on Tiptree 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 Tiptree roofs
Tiptree has almost no medieval core to speak of. The place grew outwards from common and heathland in the nineteenth century, expanded again around the fruit growing and the jam works, and then expanded very substantially indeed from the nineteen fifties onwards. The result is one of the largest villages in Essex and a housing stock that is overwhelmingly nineteenth century smallholders’ cottages, interwar bungalows and postwar estate housing.
That mix is good news for anybody who wants daylight through a roof, because most of it is straightforward to work on, and it changes the questions. Instead of conservation consent and burgage plot access, a Tiptree job usually turns on pitch, truss layout and where a shallow roof stops being suitable for a roof window. Sunspire covers Tiptree from Chelmsford along with the rest of the areas we cover list, and works the specification out on site.
- 01 A village that grew outwards rather than upwards
- 02 Smallholding bungalows and the fruit growing plots
- 03 Dormers, chalet roofs and the slope that is left
- 04 Shallow pitches, and the number below which a roof window stops
- 05 The concrete tile that covers most of Tiptree
- 06 Four planes and no gable, working with a hipped roof
- 07 Wide plots, side access and where a lantern lands
- 08 Garages turned into rooms, and the roof above them
- 09 The nineteen seventies flat roof, decades on
- 10 Open aspect, and the solar gain that comes with it
- 11 Lighting the middle of a bungalow plan
- 12 Converting a Tiptree loft, and what the truss allows
- 13 The older brick cottages near the works
- 14 Planning conditions on the newer Tiptree closes
- 15 Who notifies the work in Tiptree
- 16 How a Tiptree job is priced
A village that grew outwards rather than upwards
Read Tiptree by generation and the roof tells you which one you are standing under. Brick cottages with slate or plain clay tile from the eighteen hundreds along the older roads. Wide-plot bungalows and chalet bungalows from the fruit growing decades between the wars. Hipped semis with concrete interlocking tiles from the fifties and sixties. Then trussed estate housing from the seventies onwards, and small infill developments still going in.
Each generation brings a different structure, a different covering and a different flashing kit. Almost nothing in the village is more than two storeys, which means access is generally easy and scaffold costs are modest compared with a town centre job. The constraint moves elsewhere, onto pitch and onto what is holding the roof up.
Smallholding bungalows and the fruit growing plots
The land around Tiptree was divided into smallholdings for fruit and vegetables, and the housing that came with that is distinctive: single storey, wide frontage, generous plot, and a roof that covers a lot of floor area at a modest height.
A bungalow is the best possible candidate for rooflights and the reason is geometry. Every room has a roof directly above it, there is no upper floor in the way, and daylight from overhead reaches the middle of a deep plan that no window in an external wall can light. The trade-off is that the ceiling is usually close under the roof, so the reveal is short and the light lands hard. Splaying the reveal, opening the internal lining outwards towards the room, spreads the light across the ceiling and roughly doubles the apparent size of the opening for the cost of a little extra plastering.
Dormers, chalet roofs and the slope that is left
The chalet bungalow is everywhere in Tiptree. A steeper main roof with rooms already formed inside it, a dormer or two on the front, and a slope behind that is usually untouched.
The rear slope is the opportunity. It is unseen from the road, the pitch is comfortable for a roof window, and it faces away from the dormers so it does not compete with them visually. What has to be checked is head height and the collar. Chalet roofs frequently have a collar tie at around two metres and a purlin below it, and both of them decide where the head of a window can sit. Set the unit so that the head is above eye level for a standing adult, and the room gains view as well as light rather than a bright rectangle you look up at.
On a chalet roof the collar and the purlin decide the window position long before the brochure does.
Shallow pitches, and the number below which a roof window stops
Interwar bungalows across the village run at pitches in the low thirties and sometimes lower, and the flat-roofed additions bolted on since are flatter still. Pitch is the first thing measured at survey, properly, with a level and a rule rather than by eye from the garden.
Most roof windows are rated from fifteen degrees. A handful are approved from ten with a specified underlay and a purpose-made sub-frame beneath them. Below ten degrees the honest answer is that no roof window is suitable and the correct product is a flat rooflight on a built kerb, which is designed for exactly that condition. That is a statement about the building rather than a limitation on the work, and it is much cheaper to hear before an order than after one.
The concrete tile that covers most of Tiptree
Concrete interlocking tile is the default covering across the postwar and later stock, in the double roman and the flat profiles depending on the decade.
Interlocking tile has a deep profile and a defined side lap, and the flashing kit has to be designed for that depth. A kit intended for a flat plain tile leaves the apron bridging the troughs with a void underneath, which passes inspection from the ground and holds water where nobody looks. Concrete also weathers to a very different colour from new stock, so tiles removed around an opening are worth keeping and re-laying rather than replacing with fresh ones that will stand out on the slope for a decade.
Four planes and no gable, working with a hipped roof
The fifties and sixties semis around the village are hipped, and a hip changes the arithmetic of where an opening can go.
A gable roof gives long unbroken runs of slope. A hipped roof gives four triangular or trapezoidal planes that narrow towards the top, so the usable area is the middle of a plane with at least three hundred millimetres of clear covering to every hip, to the ridge and to the eaves. On a modest hipped semi that leaves less room than it appears to from the pavement. Two smaller units set symmetrically on one plane frequently work better than one large one squeezed against a hip, and they look deliberate from outside rather than apologetic.
Wide plots, side access and where a lantern lands
This is where Tiptree is easy. Most plots have side access, a driveway that will take a vehicle, and enough room at the rear for a tower or a small scaffold without touching a neighbour’s land.
That matters for the larger products. A roof lantern arrives as a kit of glazed panels and rafter bars, and getting them to the back of a house through a hallway is what limits size in older towns. Here they usually go down the side. Waste comes out the same way, a skip stands on the drive rather than on the road, and none of that needs a permit. The saving is real, and it shows up in the difference between a Tiptree figure and one for the same work in a tight town centre plot.
Garages turned into rooms, and the roof above them
Converting an attached or integral garage into a habitable room is common here because the plots came with garages and the families outgrew them. The conversion produces a room that is long, narrow and lit from one end only.
The roof above is usually either a continuation of the main tiled roof or a shallow flat deck. Either way, a rooflight over the far end is what turns a dark store into a usable room. On the tiled version the check is what the roof is built from, since an integral garage roof is often a lightweight trussed structure never intended to carry point loads. On the flat version the kerb is built off the deck structure, not off the boards, and the covering is dressed up the sides before the unit lands on it.
The nineteen seventies flat roof, decades on
Flat roofed rear additions went on across the village in the seventies and eighties, and a good number of them still carry the covering they were built with.
Before any unit goes into a deck of that age, three things get established: whether the fall is still there, where the water actually leaves, and whether the deck is sound underfoot. Falls flatten over time as the structure deflects, and water standing more than about forty eight hours after rain is ponding. A kerb placed upstream of a tired outlet changes the flow pattern across the whole surface. Where the survey shows the fall has gone, sorting the drainage first and setting glass into a roof that sheds properly is the cheaper order of work even though it does not feel like it on the day.
| Tiptree roof type | Typical pitch | Usual answer |
|---|---|---|
| Victorian cottage, slate or plain tile | 40 to 45 degrees | Roof window between hand cut rafters |
| Interwar bungalow, clay or concrete tile | Low 30s | Roof window, position set by ceiling line |
| Chalet bungalow rear slope | 40 degrees plus | Roof window below the collar |
| Postwar estate house, trussed | 30 to 35 degrees | Narrow units between trusses |
| Flat rear addition | Under 10 degrees | Flat rooflight on a built kerb |
Open aspect, and the solar gain that comes with it
Tiptree sits high and open, with fields and orchard land on most sides and comparatively little mature tree cover over the newer housing. A south or west facing roof plane here collects the full afternoon sun with nothing shading it.
Which makes glazing specification a real decision rather than a default. The g-value describes how much solar energy passes through the glass, and a low g-value means less heat gain and, unavoidably, slightly less light. Optimising the U-value alone gives a room that is cheap to heat in February and unusable by three in the afternoon in July. On a south facing bungalow roof over a kitchen, solar control glass is the starting point and the area is kept disciplined. There is more detail on the energy efficient rooflights page.
Lighting the middle of a bungalow plan
Deep single storey plans produce internal rooms with no external wall at all: an inner hall, a bathroom in the middle of the plan, a utility off the kitchen.
A sun tunnel is the right tool there. It is a reflective duct carrying daylight from a small opening in the roof covering down to a diffuser in the ceiling below, and it fits within a single rafter or truss bay with no structural opening at all. The rigid type outperforms the flexible one over any distance, because every bend and every corrugation costs light. Kept short and as straight as the roof void allows, the output in a windowless bathroom is genuinely useful rather than a novelty.
Converting a Tiptree loft, and what the truss allows
Loft conversions on the estate housing run into the same wall every time. Trussed rafter roofs are engineered assemblies, the webs and the bottom chord carry load, and they are not cut without a designed replacement structure.
So a conversion in a trussed roof is a structural job first and a glazing job second. New floor beams take the load off the ceiling ties, purlins or a steel replace the web bracing, and only then does an opening become possible. Where the roof stays as built, a roof window sits between two trusses at six hundred centres, which caps clear width at around five hundred and fifty millimetres. Two units side by side, sharing a properly detailed flashing arrangement between them, is very often the honest answer.
The older brick cottages near the works
Around the older roads there are terraces and pairs of nineteenth century brick cottages with natural slate or plain clay tile, low eaves and shallow front to back plans.
Slate is the covering that rewards care. It is thin, flat and brittle, it takes a low profile flashing kit dressed tight to the surface, and slates lifted rather than broken can go straight back down. A proud flashing on a slate slope is visible from the street and it also holds water at the head of the unit. Plain clay tile takes a kit with soakers dressed between the courses, which is slower work than an apron over an interlocking tile and looks entirely different when it is done properly.
Planning conditions on the newer Tiptree closes
For most houses a rooflight falls under permitted development, provided it projects no more than one hundred and fifty millimetres beyond the plane of the existing slope and sits no higher than the highest part of the roof.
Those rights are not universal. They are removed or restricted by planning condition on a good number of newer developments, they do not apply to flats or maisonettes, and some estates carry design covenants on the title separately from planning. Checking takes very little time and it happens before anything is ordered rather than after. Where a restriction does apply, it usually shapes which slope the unit goes on rather than ruling the work out.
Who notifies the work in Tiptree
Tiptree sits in the Colchester authority area, which surprises people who assume everything Blackwater-facing is Maldon district. It matters only because it decides where the notification goes.
New rooflights and replacements into existing openings are both notifiable in England. Part L sets the thermal standard, Part K applies where there is a risk of falling, and Part B governs escape provision from a habitable room in a roof. Sunspire handles that notification as part of the job, through the local authority or an approved inspector. The benefit lands at sale, when a solicitor asks for the completion certificate and there is one to hand over.
How a Tiptree job is priced
Two figures, in order. A range by email once the roof type, the rough size and the room are known, then a fixed written price after a survey, with the unit named by manufacturer, model, external size, glazing specification and frame finish, and the workmanship carrying a ten year guarantee.
What moves the number here is pitch, structure and covering rather than access. A shallow roof that needs a kerb built costs more than a straightforward trim into a forty degree slope. A trussed roof that needs an engineer costs more again. Send a photograph of the roof from the garden, one of the ceiling from below, and a rough room size, and the first figure comes back quickly. Typical ranges by job type sit on the costs page.
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Tell us about your roof
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