Roof Lantern Installation
Flat-roof glazing sized to the room and detailed into the kerb below it.
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London fringe
Rooflight installation in Upminster
Interwar semis, conservation pockets. What that means for getting glass into a roof here is the whole of this page.
We travel to Upminster
10-year guarantee
UpminsterTown covered
London fringeWithin
30Mile radius by road
10Year workmanship guarantee
In Upminster
What we install on Upminster 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 Upminster roofs
Upminster is mostly a nineteen twenties and thirties suburb, and it is the exceptions that decide how a rooflight job runs. Scattered through the interwar streets are protected pockets: the windmill and the ground around it, the old lanes at Corbets Tey, the village core at Cranham, and a handful of much older buildings that predate everything around them by four centuries.
Get the designation question settled and the rest is comfortable work. These are generous plots with wide side access, cut timber roofs that trim properly, and deep rear extensions that suit glass. Sunspire travels down from Chelmsford, roughly seventeen miles by road, and Upminster sits at the south western edge of the area covered. The borough is Havering, the same authority as Romford four miles west.
- 01 Upminster’s protected pockets, and where they sit
- 02 The windmill, and the setting that surrounds it
- 03 The garden suburb, and the plots it set out
- 04 Gables, catslides and the roof shapes of a nineteen thirties house
- 05 What is actually holding up an Upminster roof
- 06 Clay tile originally, concrete tile since
- 07 Corbets Tey and Cranham, and the older fabric out there
- 08 Deep rear extensions on a wide plot
- 09 Bay roofs, porch canopies and the small planes nobody counts
- 10 Timbered gables, and the elevation a scaffold stands against
- 11 Front slopes facing the road, and what is permitted on them
- 12 Cold water tanks, and what is sitting in the void
- 13 Flat roofs over the additions, and the fall that was meant to be there
- 14 Kerb heights on an Upminster flat roof
- 15 Which way an Upminster roof faces
- 16 Havering Building Control, and how an Upminster job is priced
Upminster’s protected pockets, and where they sit
There is no single conservation area covering the town. There are several small ones, and they do not follow the pattern most owners expect. The ground around the windmill on St Mary’s Lane is designated. So is the old lane at Corbets Tey, the village centre at Cranham, and the setting around the medieval hall house and barn out towards the green belt edge.
The practical consequence is that two houses on opposite sides of the same road can be in different positions, and neither owner has any reason to know it. A direction removing permitted development rights within one of those pockets means an application for a rooflight that would need none a street away. Establishing the position for a specific address is a short conversation with the borough and it happens before anything is measured.
The windmill, and the setting that surrounds it
The smock mill on St Mary’s Lane is the landmark and it is a designated building of high grade, standing on open ground above the surrounding housing.
Its setting is a material consideration in planning terms, which means a roof plane that can be seen in the same view as the mill is treated more carefully than one that cannot. That is a question about sightlines rather than about distance. The ground here is gently rising, so a rear slope invisible from the road can be perfectly visible from the open land around the mill. Working the real views out before an application is drafted saves the objection that otherwise arrives on its own.
The garden suburb, and the plots it set out
Much of Upminster was laid out as a garden suburb from the early twentieth century, developed in phases after the railway made the commute practical. The layout is the thing worth noticing: wide roads, deep plots, houses set back behind front gardens and separated by genuine side access.
For a roof job this is close to ideal. A scaffold can be built without a highway licence, material can go round the side rather than through the house, and waste leaves on a lorry parked on the drive rather than on a suspended parking bay. It is one of the reasons an Upminster address usually prices more comfortably than a terraced street a few miles west, where the same unit needs a licence and a footway closure.
Gables, catslides and the roof shapes of a nineteen thirties house
Speculative builders in the interwar period sold on the roof line, so the shapes are elaborate. A front gable projecting over a bay, a hip behind it, a catslide running down over a rear addition, and a separate small roof over the porch.
Each of those is a different plane with a different pitch and a different amount of usable area, and only some are worth glazing. The rule of thumb is to look for the largest uninterrupted plane with no hip cutting into it and no valley crossing it, which on this stock is usually the rear main slope. A gable end plane looks generous from the garden and is frequently the wrong choice, because a purlin runs across it at the height a unit would want to sit.
What is actually holding up an Upminster roof
These are cut roofs, built on site from loose timber, and the arrangement is consistent enough to predict. Rafters at roughly four hundred centres, a purlin running horizontally partway up each slope, and struts from the purlin down onto an internal load bearing wall, usually the spine wall over the hall.
Cut timber can be trimmed, which is what makes this stock straightforward. Rafters either side of the opening are doubled, trimmers go in above and below, and the load is redistributed properly. The purlin is the constraint rather than the rafters. A unit can sit above it or below it, and an opening that would cross it needs the purlin trimmed and supported, which is structural work with a calculation behind it rather than routine carpentry.
Clay tile originally, concrete tile since
Interwar Upminster roofs were covered in clay plain tile, small units laid double lap in courses with a broken bond. A great many have since been re-covered, most commonly in the nineteen seventies and eighties, in concrete interlocking tile.
The flashing kit is completely different for the two. Plain tile takes soakers dressed between the courses. Interlocking concrete tile has a deep profile and takes a kit designed for that depth, or the apron bridges the troughs and leaves a route under the covering. There is a second issue with a re-covered roof, which is weight. Concrete interlocking tile is heavier than the clay plain tile it replaced, and where the re-covering was done without strengthening, the roof has already been asked to carry more than it was designed for. That is worth looking at from inside before an opening is formed in it.
Corbets Tey and Cranham, and the older fabric out there
South and east of the suburb the character changes. Corbets Tey and Cranham were villages before Upminster was a station, and the buildings out there include weatherboard, handmade clay plain tile at steep pitches, and roofs with rafters that vary in size along their length.
Weatherboarded elevations are a specific consideration. Boarding will not carry a scaffold tie or an upstand fixing, so the platform stands free of the wall and ties into solid masonry elsewhere. Handmade tile is uneven, the colour varies within one roof, and the flashing soakers are cut to the tiles that are actually there rather than to a standard. Matching salvage is on site before the covering is opened, because breakage in handling is normal on old peg tile.
Deep rear extensions on a wide plot
Plot depth is the reason Upminster generates as much lantern work as it does. A four or five metre rear extension across the back of a nineteen thirties house creates a room whose far corner is a long way from any wall glazing, and the roof over it is flat.
A roof lantern suits it. The glazing bars converge on a ridge, so the ceiling gains height and direction rather than simply brightness, and the effect over an island or a table is quite different from a flat panel of sky. The usual starting ratio is glazing area of around fifteen to twenty per cent of the floor area below, which on a four by five metre extension is roughly three to four square metres. That rule breaks in a deep room with one external wall, where it is too little, and in a small south facing one, where it is too much.
Bay roofs, porch canopies and the small planes nobody counts
An interwar house has more roof than the main slopes. There is a tiled roof over the front bay, a canopy over the porch, sometimes a small hipped roof over a side projection, and often a flat roof over a garage that has since been joined to the house.
These small planes rarely take a rooflight themselves, and they matter for a different reason. They interrupt where a scaffold can stand, they carry their own flashings that a new one has to relate to, and a bay roof abutting the main wall has a lead detail that gets disturbed if a platform is built badly. Where a garage has become a room, the flat roof over it is frequently the best target in the whole house for a flush unit, because the space below has no other roofline.
Timbered gables, and the elevation a scaffold stands against
Applied timbering on a rendered gable is one of the signatures of this stock, and it is decorative rather than structural: boards fixed to a rendered face, with render panels between them.
It will not take a tie, a ladder foot or an impact, and it does not make good invisibly once damaged, because the render panels are finished with a texture that is difficult to reproduce cleanly. Where a rooflight is going into a slope above a timbered gable the platform is freestanding, or the work is set up from the rear where the plot allows it. On these plots the rear is almost always available, which is the reason this rarely becomes an argument here.
Front slopes facing the road, and what is permitted on them
The question comes up constantly because the front bedroom is often the darkest room in a nineteen thirties house. Outside a designated pocket, permitted development covers a rooflight in a front slope, subject to two conditions that do real work.
The unit must not project more than one hundred and fifty millimetres beyond the plane of the existing roof slope, and it must not stand higher than the highest part of the roof. In practice that means a flush unit set into the covering rather than anything raised, and on a street of near identical houses it also means a position chosen to sit sensibly against the neighbours rather than in the geometric middle. Inside a designated pocket the same slope needs an application, and the answer is usually a slim flush conservation pattern unit.
Cold water tanks, and what is sitting in the void
An interwar loft is rarely empty. There is a cold water storage tank up there, usually sitting on bearers spanning the ceiling joists, sometimes a second smaller feed and expansion tank beside it, and the pipework runs between them across the void.
Tanks are heavy when full and they are almost never positioned where anyone would choose. If the sensible place for a roof window is directly under a tank, the tank moves, and moving it means draining down, repositioning bearers onto load bearing timber and re-running pipework. None of that is difficult. All of it is a different trade and a different day, and finding out about it at survey rather than on the morning of the install is the difference between a one day job and a two day one.
Flat roofs over the additions, and the fall that was meant to be there
Every flat roof on an Upminster plot, over the rear extension, over the garage, over the utility, is laid to a fall. A flat roof is not flat: the design minimum is 1:80, which allows for deflection and construction tolerance and is intended to deliver a genuine fall in reality.
Plenty of older decks never achieved it, and a good many have since been laid over twice, which adds weight without adding drainage. Water that stands for more than forty eight hours after rain is ponding, and ponding around a kerb is the condition that finds any weakness in a detail. Where a survey finds it, the fall is sorted first and the glass goes into a roof that drains. The deck matters too, because chipboard that has been damp for a decade will not carry a kerb.
Kerb heights on an Upminster flat roof
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.
On a sheltered suburban plot with mature planting around it and a roof that drains cleanly, some manufacturers will warrant less. Where the roof is large, level and slow to clear, one hundred and fifty is the floor rather than the target. Four details around the perimeter decide whether a rooflight is dry in ten winters: upstand height, the fall around it, the laps of the flashing, and where the covering terminates. None of them is visible once the work is finished, which is exactly why the workmanship carries a ten year guarantee.
Which way an Upminster roof faces
Orientation is settled before size. The streets here run in several directions and plots are deep, so a rear extension can face any way at all, and mature trees on a long garden change the answer again.
A north facing plane gives even, cool, shadowless light all day with almost no heat gain, and will carry a generous area of fairly neutral glass. A south or west facing plane collects the high summer sun straight onto the glazing. Two numbers describe the unit and they pull against each other: the U-value measures heat loss, lower is better, and the g-value measures the fraction of solar energy passing through, where lower means less gain and slightly less light. A large south facing lantern over a kitchen without solar control glass is a room that is unusable by mid afternoon in July.
Havering Building Control, and how an Upminster job is priced
Fitting a new rooflight or replacing an existing one is notifiable under the Building Regulations. It engages Part L for thermal performance, Part K where there is a risk of falling, and Part B where a room in the roof relies on the opening for escape. Sunspire handles the notification as part of the job, into Havering.
Pricing runs in two stages: a range by email once the basics are known, then a fixed written figure after a survey. The survey settles the covering and whether it has been changed, the pitch measured with a gauge, what is holding the roof up and where the purlin runs, what is stored in the void, which designation applies to the address, and where a platform can stand. A photograph of the roof, one of the ceiling and a rough room size is enough for the first figure, and the general ground on what drives a price is set out separately.
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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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