West Parley
What happens to the daylight in a West Parley house after the second extension?
Bungalows, chalet houses and family homes between Parley Cross and the common, each built out sideways and backwards
West Parley is a village that has been drawn into the edge of the Bournemouth area without losing its own centre. The village centres on the junction known as Parley Cross, and the houses spread out from it along roads of detached bungalows, chalet houses and family homes with big enough plots to build on. That last fact shapes rooflight work here. A house in West Parley may well not be the house it was when it was built. It has been given a side extension, a bigger kitchen, a conservatory or a room over the garage, and sometimes all of them.
Each addition spends some daylight. A new room pushes the middle of the house further from the windows, a flat roof is laid over what used to be a back door, and an old window ends up facing a wall. Rooflights are how that daylight comes back, and anyone who has lived in a house for a while usually knows exactly which room feels dark.
Between Parley Cross and the common
Much of the housing around the crossroads and along the roads towards Parley Common dates from the twentieth century, with tiled roofs on timber structures. The pitches are usually modest, and the roofs often include a hipped end or a small gable over a porch. Because the plots are wide, the rear of the house is where building tends to happen, and the roof that results is a mixture: the original tiled pitch, a flat extension beneath it and perhaps a pitched garage roof alongside.
We visit with a ladder and a tape, check the structure of the original roof and write down what each part is made of. That list matters, because a rooflight is attached to whatever roof it sits in, and a modern flat roof, an old felt roof and a pitched tile roof each need different upstand details and flashings.
The first extension and the room in the middle
A familiar West Parley job is the kitchen that has been extended into the garden. The architect adds bifold or sliding doors on the garden side, and the room is bright for the first three metres and dim beyond. A lantern or a pair of flat rooflights over the working end solves that, and because the roof is flat or very shallow, the glass stands on a kerb that your roofer or carpenter forms. The height of that kerb is not a decoration; it keeps the membrane well clear of standing water. A kerb of 150mm or taller above the covering is the common guidance, subject to each maker's instructions, and the upstand page gives the reasons.
Lantern or flat rooflight is a design choice as well as a technical one. A lantern gives the room height and a sculptural ceiling, and it needs more ceiling depth and a larger kerb. A flat rooflight is low, discreet and quick to include in the build. The comparison of lanterns and flat rooflights sets the two side by side, and at the survey we sketch both against your actual ceiling height.
The second extension, over or beside the garage
Garage roofs in the village vary. Some are pitched in the same tiles as the house, and some are flat, covered in felt, GRP or a rubber membrane. A flat roof covered in glass-reinforced plastic accepts a rooflight well when the kerb is bonded into it, while a felt roof ageing past its best is better treated as part of a full re-covering. Our guide to rooflights on EPDM, GRP and felt roofs explains how each is dressed up the kerb.
A garage converted into a playroom, utility room or office is another possible step. The room usually has a door and a small window at one end and nothing else. One flat rooflight turns the middle of it from a store into a space people choose to use, and the roof is simple enough that the work can be done quickly once the sizes are agreed.
Chalet houses and the rooms in their roofs
Chalet-style houses have bedrooms partly within the roof, with dormers at the front or back and sloping ceilings that fall to a low wall. Roof windows here serve the rooms that dormers do not reach: a landing, a bathroom, a study corner. A bathroom is a good place for one, because the window can be positioned above the bath or basin and opened to clear steam, helping steam leave the room alongside the extractor already fitted.
Where a roof window is the second way out of a bedroom, the opening size and sill height are fixed by the rules for escape windows, and the building control body checks them. We choose the unit with that in mind. If you are planning a conversion from scratch, roof windows for loft conversions covers the layout questions.
The front slope that faces the road
On a chalet or a bungalow loft conversion, the rear slope carries the dormer or the extension, and the front slope is the one the neighbours see. Roof windows at the front are best kept small, lined up with the windows below, and set into the tiles with a flashing kit that matches the roof covering. The effect is a tidy elevation from the street, and inside, the room gets light from two directions, which makes a small bedroom feel larger than its floor area suggests. Blinds for these windows are best chosen at the same time, since the maker's fitting kit differs by model. We mark the positions on a photograph of the elevation during the survey, so the layout is clear to you well before anything is ordered.
A kitchen that gets hot, and a window that opens
A glazed extension facing the garden in summer collects heat, and a fixed rooflight adds to it. An opening rooflight lets warm air rise out through the roof while the doors below stay shut or open as you like. The glass can also carry a solar control coating that reduces the heat entering. Motorised units are switched from the wall and can close automatically in rain if a sensor is fitted, which is covered in rooflight rain sensors. The electrician needs to know about the wiring at first fix, which is another reason to settle the choice early.
Glass near a busy sky
Bournemouth Airport lies a short way to the east, and if aircraft noise matters to you in a bedroom, say so at the survey. A rooflight is a large pane in a roof, and a bedroom beneath one hears the weather and the sky more than a bedroom with a conventional wall and window. The glazing make-up, with its panes and gaps, affects how sound reaches the room. We pass on the maker's information for the glazing specified and talk through the options with you, rather than quoting figures we cannot back up.
Heath, birch and falling debris
Parley Common and the heath around it bring birch, gorse and pine into the area, and their seed, needles and catkins land on roofs. A flat rooflight with a shallow slope keeps more than a steep roof window, so access for cleaning is worth planning in. Self-cleaning glass copes best where rain reaches it, and the page on self-cleaning rooflight glass sets out where it helps and where a brush is still needed.
Hallways, porches and small dark rooms
Porches and entrance halls with flat roofs can take a small flat rooflight or a sun tunnel. Inside rooms in a bungalow, such as a hall, a cloakroom or a bathroom with no exterior wall, are good sun tunnel candidates, because the tube runs through the roof void without altering the ceiling. The tube between roof and ceiling may be straight or may need to bend round a rafter or a duct, and rigid and flexible sun tunnels describes how the choice is made. A sun tunnel gives daylight but no view, which is exactly right for a cloakroom or a hall.
Setting the order date with your builder
In a West Parley extension, the rooflight is on the critical path in a quiet way: until the kerb is built and the roof is covered, the rest of the build cannot be sealed. Once the drawings fix the position, we give the builder the opening or kerb sizes for the unit, and the order goes to the maker, timed to land when the roof is ready for glass. The confirmed date reaches you and your builder together. Different products have different lead times, each fixed by the maker and shown on the quote.
Dorset Council and the planning register
Dorset Council handles planning for West Parley, and the council's website is dorsetcouncil.gov.uk. Rooflights can fall inside permitted development, though that turns on the house and how it has been altered, and an earlier permission for an extension sometimes carries a condition that changes the position. We read the register of past planning decisions at your address and share what it says before an order is placed, since the council has the final say on any application. Guidance on past decisions is also useful to your builder, who can then plan the programme around any condition. The rules themselves are set out in the rooflight planning guide.
Work that is notifiable under the Building Regulations is notified to Building Control by us, and the workmanship guarantee covers the installation.
West Parley sits west of Southampton, 27.9 road miles from our base, so survey visits are booked to suit your builder's site days.
