Skylights & Rooflights in KippaxDaylight for village terraces, family semis and tidy bungalows

Kippax began as a village and grew in layers, so its streets show several different ideas of what a roof should be.

The village has a long history, and the twentieth century added to it with housing built for the mining families who worked in the area. That means rows of brick terraces, interwar semis laid out on wider streets, and later estates with bungalows and modest family homes. Each of these has a different pitch, a different covering and a different attitude to the loft.

The result is that no two rooflight jobs here start from the same place. A terrace wants a neat, single window, a semi can carry a pair, and a bungalow usually calls for a different answer altogether. We look at the roof first and the product second, which is the only order that works.

A useful habit before we visit is to stand in the room you want lit and look up, then note where the rafters run and where the chimney breast or the water tank sits. Those details tell us a great deal about which size of window will fit between the timbers without cutting more than is needed.

It also helps to know where a house sits in the village. Streets near the older core tend to have narrower plots and tighter access, so the way materials reach the roof is planned in advance. Streets on the newer estates have more room to work in, with easier access for ladders and deliveries, but their roofs are often shallower, which limits what a loft can offer.

A terrace gives you a narrow roof, but a narrow roof is not a reason to go without daylight upstairs.

Terraced houses have a single rear slope facing the yard or garden, and that is where the glass usually goes. The width of the roof between the party walls sets the maximum size, and the position of the rafters decides where the frame can sit. A window one size smaller than the maximum often looks better and leaves a wider band of covering around it.

Inside, the window is most often wanted in the back bedroom or in a box-room that has always been dark. A small window there turns a forgotten store into a proper, usable room, and a child's bed or a desk suddenly has somewhere to go. In a terrace the shared wall also means noise travels, so we work in sensible hours and let neighbours know if a skip or a tower will sit outside the house for a day. Our VELUX window installation page lists the sizes and how to read them.

Kippax falls under Leeds City Council, which is the body to ask when a question about a rooflight does not have an obvious answer.

Most houses can have a roof window without an application, within the conditions laid out on our skylight planning page. If you live in a flat or a maisonette, that route is closed, and an application is needed. A listed building needs consent of its own, and a street under an Article 4 direction may have lost the usual rights, so a quick check is wise before ordering anything.

Leeds offers a pre-application route for larger schemes, though a single rooflight rarely needs one. Where you are unsure, it is worth asking the council first, and the answer is worth having in writing. We are glad to tell you what to ask for, and what to keep.

If your house is part of a longer terrace, the roof slope runs close to the neighbours' on each side, so we check where the party walls fall before anything is cut, and we let the people next door know when the work is planned.

On a long terrace the neighbours' roofs already show you what the street tolerates, and that is a helpful starting point for the council conversation.

From a survey in Kippax

Where no roof slope sits above the room, a sun tunnel is the tidy way to bring daylight in.

The middle of a semi often holds a landing and a bathroom that have never had a window. A sun tunnel captures daylight in a dome on the roof, carries it down a reflective tube and releases it through a round diffuser in the ceiling. It will not give you a view, and it is not for a room you live in all day, but for a space you pass through it changes the feel completely.

The job is quick and kind to the rooms below, and the roof is closed again before we leave. Our sun tunnel installation page covers the sizes and the finishes. A bathroom with a tunnel often still wants an extractor fan alongside it, because the tunnel brings light but does nothing about steam. The tube runs through the loft, so we also keep it clear of any wiring and insulation, and wrap it so it does not become a cold spot in winter.

Where a kitchen has been built out at the back, a rooflight is the quickest way to stop the room feeling like a corridor.

Extensions on the estates around Kippax tend to be simple single-storey additions with flat roofs. The room is often brighter at the garden end than at the old wall, and a flat rooflight or a small lantern evens that out. We look at whether the roof will take the extra opening, how the structure runs, and whether the covering is worth keeping. A rooflight is only as long-lived as the roof it sits in, so we say so honestly.

If the existing roof is close to retirement, it is cheaper and neater to renew it while the opening is made than to patch round a new rooflight. Your survey will flag it, and the quote shows the roof work on its own line so you can see exactly what you are paying for.

Many homes here still carry a rooflight put in decades ago, and the signs of age are plain once you know them.

A plastic dome turns yellow and brittle in the sun, and an early glazed unit may fog between the panes. Inside, a damp ring on the ceiling or a draught round the frame points the same way. Whether the answer is new glass or a whole new rooflight depends on the condition of the frame and the kerb beneath it, and we check both before recommending anything. Where the old glass is a plastic dome, a new glazed unit also keeps the room warmer, because modern glass loses far less heat than thin plastic.

The glass-only route is set out under misted and failed rooflights.

Work on a roof should not mean living in a building site, and we plan the job so it does not.

Dust sheets go over the floors, stairs and furniture before we begin, with a screen across the working area wherever possible. The hidden work, such as the trimmers, flashings and insulation, is done with care and photographed, and you receive the photos when we hand over. A walk-through ends the job, with the product details and the paperwork in your hands. We show you how to open, close and clean the window, and where the data plate is, so the size is on record if you ever need a blind or a spare part.

Kippax is about 23.4 road miles south-west of York, a manageable drive for us, and a visit to look at the roof is free wherever you live in the village.

We inspect the roof and the room, talk through the planning position and Building Regulations, and then send a quote that lists each cost separately along with a plan for each day. If the job needs Building Control to be told, we make the notification, and the 10-year workmanship guarantee comes with the work.

We also cover Garforth, Allerton Bywater and Swillington.