Skylights & Rooflights in EasingwoldPantile roofs, market-town streets and rear extensions

Look along the streets off the Market Place and you read the town's history in its roofs, because each period used a different covering.

The older brick cottages and terraces in the middle of Easingwold are mostly roofed in clay pantiles, the curved red tiles that suit the Vale of York. Some grander houses carry slate. On the streets built between the wars, and on the estates that have grown out around the old centre, concrete interlocking tiles are far more usual. The covering matters because it decides how a roof window is flashed into the slope, and how much of the roof has to be lifted and put back.

A pantile roof is lovely to look at and slightly fussy to work on. The tiles are laid in overlapping curves, so the flashing has to follow that wave rather than sit flat. Each tile is taken up by hand, the sound ones are kept, and they go back around the new frame in the same courses.

The authority here is North Yorkshire Council, and for most ordinary houses the answer is simpler than people fear.

Easingwold used to sit under Hambleton District Council. Since April 2023 North Yorkshire Council has handled planning for the town. On a house with no special designation, a rooflight is generally permitted development as long as it keeps to the conditions set out on our planning permission page. Flats are treated differently, and so are listed buildings.

Easingwold has an older core around the Market Place and Long Street, so it is worth asking the council whether your street carries any extra controls before glass is ordered. Settle the roof slope first. A rear slope is the simpler case, and a front slope facing the street is the one to raise with the council.

Building Regulations are a separate matter from planning. Cutting through the roof triggers an approval for the structure and its thermal performance, and we arrange that notification as part of the job, so you are not left chasing a certificate afterwards.

In a market town the street is the audience, so decide which slope the glass sits on before you choose the glass.

From a survey in Easingwold

Plenty of houses and bungalows have a flat-roofed room added behind, and the dim centre of that room is the usual reason people call.

A rear extension is bright by the garden doors and gloomy by the old back wall. A flat rooflight over that gloomy stretch changes the room more than a larger window at the end would. Where the ceiling is high enough and the budget allows, a roof lantern gives a taller, more architectural result, with light coming from all four sides.

Before we quote, we look at what the flat roof is made of, how old it is and which way the joists run. If the covering is close to worn out, it makes sense to renew it while the rooflight goes in, so the new upstand is not built onto a tired surface. The two jobs then share one set of scaffold, one set of dust sheets and one visit from the same team.

A roof window turns an unused loft into a room that can be slept in, worked in or played in, and Easingwold has houses of the right shape for it.

Semis on the edges of town often have a roof with enough pitch for a conversion, and glazing the back slope is the natural way to light it. On a two-storey house, a window in the roof cannot serve as the escape route from the floor above, because an escape window only counts for storeys within 4.5m of the ground. Such a conversion needs a protected stair.

Bungalows and chalet bungalows are different. Inside that height limit, a window in the roof may be the escape for a room up there. We explain what your own house allows at the survey, then put it in writing in the quote.

Some rooms cannot have a window at all, and for those a sun tunnel is the sensible answer.

A small upstairs bathroom in the middle of a plan, or a landing that only borrows light from the stairs, sits well away from the roof slope. A sun tunnel picks up daylight through a dome on the roof and carries it down a mirrored tube to a round diffuser set flush in the ceiling. It is a smaller job than a roof window and causes little disturbance below.

It does not give a view or fresh air, so it suits a room you pass through or use for a short time. A bedroom or a study wants a proper window.

A fit takes place in a house where people are living, so the order of the work is planned around that.

Before anything starts you are handed the order of the days in writing. Dust sheets go down over the stairs, landing and furniture, and where it is possible we screen the working space with sheeting. However long the job runs, nobody goes to bed under an open roof: it is closed in every evening. Our own team clears the rubbish away, and the same people who begin the job finish it.

The hidden parts, such as the trimmers, the upstand, the flashings, the membrane and the insulation, are done carefully and photographed. You receive the photographs when the job is handed over.

An extension built a few decades ago may still wear its original plastic dome, and the time to swap it comes sooner than most people think.

A dome that has gone yellow, glass that mists between the panes, or a damp mark on the ceiling beside the frame are the usual clues. Taking out a complete rooflight and putting in another is a controlled fitting, so the Building Control notification is made for you. If only the sealed glass unit has failed, the misted and failed rooflights page explains how it can be replaced alone.

A modern unit does better than the old one, because the glass is warmer. Part L 2021 sets 2.2 W/m²K for a rooflight and 1.4 W/m²K for a roof window, and the new product is chosen to meet those figures.

Easingwold is about 12.4 road miles north-west of York, so a visit is short and there is no charge for it.

On the visit we study the roof from outside, the room beneath it and what the council is likely to say. We measure the opening and note where the joists run. Afterwards comes an itemised quote in writing and a day-by-day timetable. Once the job is complete you are walked round it and handed the product information, the makers' warranties and our 10-year workmanship guarantee.

The villages nearby are covered as well, including Huby, Sutton-on-the-Forest and Linton-on-Ouse. Tell us about the house through the form further down and a date for the visit will be arranged.

If the house stands on a street with limited parking, mention it when you get in touch. We would rather plan where the van and the roof access go before the first day than ask a neighbour to move a car halfway through. The survey is also the moment to point out any loft boarding or stored belongings that would need clearing from under the opening.