Botley
Does a village High Street change how a rooflight should be chosen?
Brick, clay tile and slate along the old street, with plainer tiled houses built behind it, and a station on the line to Fareham
Botley grew along its High Street, and the street still sets the character of the place. It is wide and lined with brick houses, some of them Georgian, many of them Victorian, a few much older underneath, and the roofs above them are mostly clay tile or slate. Behind the street and out along the roads leading away from it, the village was filled in over the twentieth century with semis, bungalows and, more recently, estates of family houses. The River Hamble runs by the village and the old mill buildings stand beside it, and the railway line from Eastleigh to Fareham has a station here.
William Cobbett, the writer and farmer, lived in Botley in the early nineteenth century, which tells you how long the village has been a settled one. Houses that age usually carry a long history of alterations in their roofs, and we plan for that. We assume nothing about a roof until we have seen it from the inside and the outside, and we say in the quote what we have found.
Brick and tile along the High Street
The buildings on and just off the High Street are the oldest in the village, and they vary a great deal. Some are two-storey Georgian fronts with a hipped roof of slate, some are older cottages with steep clay-tiled roofs and a chimney stack in the middle, and some have shops or offices on the ground floor and rooms above. Roof pitches differ from house to house, and so does the quality of the timber. Where old rafters have bowed, we do not force a standard window into them. We choose a unit that fits the opening that exists and have the builder trim and strengthen the timbers around it.
A conservation rooflight is the usual answer for a street like this. It has a slim metal frame, usually black or dark grey, and a single vertical glazing bar, and it sits low in the covering so that the line of the roof is barely changed. From the pavement it reads as a small, neat opening of the kind that old roofs have always had. Roof windows with a recessed flashing kit also work on the rear slopes, where the street cannot see them.
Old roofs hold surprises in the lining. Underneath the tiles there may be hand-split battens, no underlay at all, or a layer of felt added decades ago, and which of those it is changes what the roofer must do around the opening. We ask the roofer to look before the quote is finalised, so the cost of renewing the underlay in that area is known and no one meets it halfway through.
Chimney stacks decide a surprising number of positions. A stack in the middle of an old roof takes up the best part of the slope, and the flues inside it may still be in use, so a rooflight is placed to one side with a gap that the roofer can flash properly. Party walls in a terrace are a similar limit. We mark each of these on the sketch that goes to the builder, along with the distance from the opening to the wall or stack, so the position is decided on paper before anyone is on the roof.
The mill, the river and the lanes beside them
Near the Hamble and the old mill buildings the housing is a mixture of cottages, terraced rows and converted buildings, some of them commercial in origin. Flat roofs over rear additions and converted ancillary buildings are common, and these take a flat rooflight readily. The kerb is built up from the roof deck, the roofer covers it with the membrane, and the unit is fitted on top. Because many of these buildings have thick masonry walls, the position of the rooflight is chosen to avoid the wall plate and any steel that has been added.
Damp air is a fact of life by a river, and an opening rooflight is useful in a kitchen or bathroom there because steam and cooking heat have somewhere to go. It does not replace an extractor fan, and we do not suggest that it does, but it adds a route for fresh air that a fixed window does not. Where a unit opens electrically, the cable run is decided with the electrician at first fix, well before the ceiling is boarded.
Converted buildings add a question of their own, which is who built the roof and to what standard. A commercial building turned into a home often has a roof made for a different job, with a different build-up of insulation and a different deck. Before we size a kerb we ask for whatever drawings exist, and failing those we open a small inspection hatch to see the layers, so the upstand height is worked out from what is really there.
Post-war streets and bungalows
Away from the old street the housing is plainer. Semi-detached houses and bungalows from the middle of the twentieth century have concrete or plain clay tiles on moderate pitches, with regular rafters. They are the easiest roofs in the village to open, and the loft conversions here are usually simple: a pair of roof windows at the front, a dormer or larger windows at the back, and a new staircase from the landing. Because the structure is regular, the window positions can be agreed with the builder in a single visit and drawn on the plan.
A bungalow with a good roof void is a particularly good candidate. The slope is wide and the ridge is high enough to give a proper room, and a row of roof windows set between the rafters lights it evenly. We work out the positions from the floor of the room as well as from the roof, because a window that looks right on the elevation can end up too high for the room's occupants to see out of.
The insulation in houses of this age is usually thin, and a conversion is the moment to improve it. The roof window sits within the new insulation, and the plasterer forms the reveal to the depth that results. We give the builder the frame depth of the unit we propose, so the insulation can be specified around it, not squeezed past it afterwards.
Estates built in the last few decades
Botley also has newer housing, with prefabricated trusses and modern underlay. These roofs cannot be cut around, so roof windows are sized to fit between trusses, or an engineer designs a structural opening and the builder forms it. On newer houses, where the trusses make a loft room harder, a rooflight tends to go into a single-storey extension at the back, a garage turned into a room, or a porch roof, and a flat rooflight suits each of them.
For a garage conversion the question is usually daylight in a room that has none. The old garage had a door and a small window at best, and when it becomes a study or a bedroom, the roof is the only place to put new light. A flat unit on a kerb is simple to build on a flat garage roof, and a sun tunnel is an alternative where the roof is pitched and the room is small. Either is planned together with the insulation depth and the ceiling finish, which are set by whoever is designing the conversion.
For a rear extension on a house of this type, the aspect of the garden matters. Glass over a south-facing room collects a great deal of sun, and the choice of glazing is made with that in mind, with the options and their effect on the lead time named in the written quote.
Lead time, order date and trade order on a Botley build
Most of the useful work happens before the roof is opened. We survey, then send the builder the opening or kerb size for your unit, the glazing, the flashing kit or upstand, and the lead time the maker has quoted. The unit is ordered to land on site in step with the finished roof, and the confirmed delivery date from the maker goes to homeowner and builder alike, so that nobody is working from a guess. On the day, the roofer has finished, the electrician has been and gone if the unit is electric, and the plasterer closes the reveals after we leave.
If the job is part of a re-roof, that is the best time to add a rooflight, because the covering is off and the flashing can be integrated with the new tiles. We coordinate with the roofer on the order of work and agree who supplies the tiles and battens around the opening.
Permissions in the village
Eastleigh Borough Council is the local planning authority. Whether the High Street and its side streets fall in a conservation area, or hold listed houses, is worth settling before drawings are made; the planning guide sets out how permitted development operates and what can take it away. The address is checked as part of the survey, the findings come back to you in plain terms, and the decision itself stays with the council.
A 10-year workmanship guarantee comes with every fitting, and the Building Regulations position is explained in the written quote.
