Flat roof rooflights in Stockport

Benefits of natural light from overhead

A window lights a room from one side. A rooflight lights it from above, so the brightness falls on the worktop, the dining table or the sofa rather than on the wall beside the glass. That matters most in rooms with a flat roof over them: a kitchen extension running back from a terrace, a utility room, a porch, the link between an old house and a new addition. In such rooms the side windows, if there are any, can face a fence or a neighbour's brickwork, and the lights are on at midday.

Brightness is the plain benefit. The softer one is how the room feels to be in. Overhead glass shows the sky, the weather and the time of day, which a window on a gloomy elevation cannot do, and that is a good part of what wellbeing in a house comes down to. The amount of light depends on the size of the unit, the height of the walls around it and the glass chosen.

Which Stockport rooms suit one

• Red-brick terraces of Edgeley, Heaton Norris and Reddish. A back addition can be the darkest room in the house, and where it has a flat roof, a rooflight over the kitchen end changes how the whole ground floor reads.
• Semis and bungalows from between the wars and after, across Heald Green, Hazel Grove, Cheadle Hulme and Bramhall. Many have a rear extension or a dark landing, and the extension roof is the natural place for one.
• Large villas in the Heatons and Davenport. Their tall ceilings can take one wherever a later flat roof sits at the rear.
• Houses along the hill edge at High Lane, Romiley and Marple, in stone or brick. A modern extension can take one without changing the look of the front.

Where it goes in the room

Over an island or a dining table, a rooflight puts the light where people sit. Over a desk or a reading chair, the sun's path across the day matters more than the size of the unit, because glare on a screen or a page is a daily irritation. We ask what each part of the room is used for before we suggest where the opening sits.

Opening it

A fixed unit has no vent. For one that opens, a hand pole suits a low ceiling and a motor suits a high one, or a room where the vent sits over a worktop. An electric one runs on a motor and answers to a rocker switch fixed to the wall, or to a handset that can be kept out of small hands. Opening is a daily action in a household: someone chooses to open it when the kitchen steams up, and someone remembers to close it.

Rain and an open rooflight

If a manual vent is left open when the weather turns, rain can come in. On electric opening models from some makers a rain sensor is built in, and it closes the vent when rain is detected. Only those particular models include it; we name them at survey rather than presenting it as standard.

Shading it

Blinds for a flat rooflight are ordered against the unit's dimensions and make. A bedroom suits a blackout blind, a kitchen or office a softer pleated one, and a bathroom a blind made for damp rooms. For a ceiling out of reach, a motorised blind can be fitted, and certain systems link it to the vent's controls.

Washing the outside glass

On a flat rooflight the outer pane cannot be turned into the room as a centre-pivot roof window can. Someone washes it from outside: a ladder up to the roof edge will do, and so will a long pole fed with water from the garden. Standing on the glass is for walk-on units alone; nobody should step onto any other kind. A self-cleaning or easy-clean finish on the outer pane is the maker's own feature, found only on certain units, and the maker's instructions explain how it behaves.

At handover

At the end of the visit we go over how it opens, which blinds fit your unit and how the outer pane is washed, so the first use of the rooflight happens with someone beside you.

Surveying a flat roof

The survey costs nothing and precedes any figure. We measure the opening and the roof, check the joists, the fall and the covering, and find out what the room is for: how high the ceiling is, whether children live in the house, and who would open the vent. To begin sooner, WhatsApp 07880 284133 will take a photo of the roof. It also helps to know:

• where the roof is reached from;
• which rooms sit under it;
• whether any drawings or building control papers exist for the extension.

We also look at what lies above and below the opening: the ceiling beneath, any pipes or cables that run through it, and the outlet the roof drains to.

The installation process

1. Deck and joists. The deck is cut and the joists trimmed round the opening, their ends carried on new timbers.
2. Upstand. The upstand is set, a ready-made insulated unit from the maker or a timber one framed on the roof.
3. The unit. The rooflight goes onto the upstand and is fixed.
4. Covering and flashing. The roof covering is tied into the upstand and the flashing is fitted, in the way that suits the material on your roof.
5. Lining inside. Indoors the shaft is lined and finished.
6. Handover walk-through. We run through the controls, lay out the blind choices for your unit and explain the washing routine.

The quote and the guarantee in writing

After the survey comes a fixed written quote, never before it. For each fitting we complete, a 10-year workmanship guarantee is in place, written down, and our guarantee page sets out what it covers.

Areas covered, local to Stockport

Our ground is Stockport and the country within about 30 road miles of it, taking in the north and east of Cheshire, the High Peak edge and the south and east of Greater Manchester. Inside the borough, planning is a matter for Stockport Metropolitan Borough Council; the areas page lists the towns. Houses and bungalows come first, in kitchen extensions, dining areas and family rooms, and small commercial work, a unit over a stockroom or a workshop for instance, is welcome with the same survey beforehand.