Rooflight and skylight options for Burntwood

A room with no outside wall, or one that looks onto a neighbour's fence, is the usual reason people ring about a skylight. A hallway, a bathroom on the landing and a utility room often have this problem.

A roof window is a full pane of glass with a frame, a flashing and a lining. A sun tunnel pairs a small dome up on the roof with a reflective tube that ends in a diffuser set into the ceiling. The two differ in light, view and cost, and a quote can include both.

Bungalows in the roof

Bungalows are among the houses you will find in Burntwood, and the space under their roofs is what many owners want to use. A bungalow loft converted into a bedroom or a study is lit by roof windows, and one of them can double as the way out when the room's floor is at 4.5m or below, which a bungalow usually allows.

At the survey we measure the roof planes, count the rafters and say how many windows each plane can take. If your builder or architect has drawings, we price from them, and the windows are placed so that the beds, the desk and the stair sit where the light falls. Our page on loft conversion roof windows covers the rooms in more depth.

Before any window is ordered, the roof structure matters. Older bungalow roofs were often built with cut rafters and purlins, and a window that interrupts a rafter needs a trimmed opening with a doubled header. Newer roofs use factory trusses that cannot be cut without an engineer's design. We tell you which kind you have and what each size would involve.

Light from a flat roof

Where a back kitchen or a rear extension has a flat roof, a flat rooflight is usually the neatest answer. It sits within a kerb or an upstand, lets in even light and does not climb above the roof line, which suits a house with neighbours close on either side.

A fixed unit usually costs less, and an opening unit lets hot air out of a kitchen. Both are on the quote when the roof allows.

Glass is the other choice on a flat roof. A clear double-glazed pane gives the brightest room, while a tinted or coated pane takes the edge off a sunny afternoon. A kitchen that faces south with a large rooflight over it can run warm, so we ask which way the roof faces and where the cooker and table will stand.

Glass for a house near woodland

The edge of Burntwood runs towards woodland and heath, and plenty of gardens carry tall trees of their own. Trees drop leaves, seeds and sap onto glass, and branches overhead cut some of the summer sun. A rooflight under a tree needs cleaning more often and takes less solar gain than one in the open, so the glass choice changes.

A self-cleaning coating breaks down dirt so that rain carries more of it away. Solar control coating reduces the heat coming in, a gain that counts on an open south-facing roof and counts for less in the shade. On the visit we note whatever hangs over the roof, and both coatings go on the quote with what each does and costs.

Planning in Burntwood is decided by Lichfield District Council. Permitted development allows many rooflights and roof windows, and our rooflight planning guide sets out its terms. Listed buildings need their own consent whatever these rights say, and the right can be gone from a given house if an Article 4 direction or an older planning condition applies.

Cannock Chase is a National Landscape, and part of it lies within 2 miles of the centre of Burntwood. We note whether your address is inside it when we check the position, and the council decides what that means for a given roof.

Under the Building Regulations, cutting a new opening for a rooflight is notifiable, and so is swapping out a whole unit. Changing just the sealed glass inside a sound frame does not need notifying. We file the notification ourselves, and when the job is signed off the certificate is passed to you.

The unit keeps the maker's own warranty, and our 10-year workmanship guarantee looks after the fitting. Our page on replacing a rooflight and the Building Regulations explains the line between the two cases.