Sun Tunnel Installation in York

A sun tunnel is the usual answer to a room with no window and no wall to put one in: a small dome on the roof, a reflective tube, and a round diffuser in the ceiling.

The dome sits on the roof and gathers daylight. Inside it, a tube with a mirror-bright lining carries that light down through the loft, or through the thickness of a flat roof, to a frosted diffuser set flush in the ceiling below. The diffuser spreads the light across the room. Nothing electrical is involved, and nothing moves. You get a pool of natural light where a bulb used to be, and you get it from the moment it is bright outside.

Tubular skylights in York homes mostly go in rooms that were never given a window. Think of the upstairs landing in a Victorian terrace, the inner hallway of a 1930s semi, a bathroom that sits in the middle of the plan, or a walk-in wardrobe under the eaves. These rooms are used every day and lit by a switch every day, and a tunnel changes that without any change to the outside walls.

It is also a smaller job than most rooflight work. The opening in the roof is a circle, usually no wider than a dinner plate or a large pizza, so the roof structure is disturbed far less than it would be for a roof window or a lantern.

The choices that follow, from the tube to the position of the diffuser, are settled at the survey with you, before anything is ordered.

The rooms that gain most are the ones you pass through rather than sit in, because they are the ones where nobody ever thought to ask for daylight.

A terraced house in the streets around Bishophill or Leeman Road often has a narrow staircase with one small window at the bottom and nothing at the top. The landing is dim from morning to night, and the bedroom doors open onto it. A sun tunnel above the landing turns a dark corridor into a space with a sense of the time of day, and it often makes the rooms leading off it feel larger because their doors now open onto light.

Bathrooms are the other obvious candidate. A bathroom in the middle of the plan has an extractor fan and a ceiling light, and that is all. A tunnel brings in something that a fitting cannot: light that changes with the weather and the hour. Because the diffuser is frosted, there is no view in or out, which suits a room where privacy matters.

Single-storey rooms that sit directly under a roof are the easiest of all, because the tube is short. Rooms with an attic or a loft above them need a longer run, and that is where the route has to be planned with some care. Our guide to sun tunnels for bathrooms and hallways looks at the two most popular rooms in more detail, including what to think about with extraction and with doors that stand open.

A sun tunnel will not turn a hallway into a conservatory, and nobody should be sold one on that basis. It will give you a clear, even daylight where there was none.

The amount of light that arrives depends on four things: the diameter of the tube, its length, the number of bends in it and the direction the roof faces. A wider tube gathers more. A short, straight run delivers more of what the dome gathers than a long run with two elbows, because every reflection inside the tube loses a little. A dome on a south-facing slope sees more sky across the day than one on a north slope, though a tunnel works on diffuse light too, so a north slope still delivers something useful.

It helps to think about the room rather than the number. A hallway that needed the light on at nine in the morning will usually not need it at noon. A bathroom that felt like a cellar will feel like a room with a pale, even window. What you should not expect is light that can be directed, as a roof window can, or that will show you a view of the sky. The diffuser is there to soften and spread the light.

If you want the long version, our answer on how much light a sun tunnel gives goes through each factor with examples of typical rooms.

A sun tunnel is not always the right product, and the survey is the point at which we say so.

The two products solve different problems. A tunnel brings light to a room that has no outside wall and not enough roof above it to take a window. A roof window gives light, a view and ventilation, but it needs a bigger opening, a bigger trimmed frame in the rafters and a room directly under the slope. Where a room sits right under a pitched roof, with a sloping ceiling and head height to spare, a roof window is the more generous choice. Where the room is on the first floor of a house with an attic space above, or is a bathroom with no view worth having, the tunnel is the better fit.

If you can stand under the slope and look up at the sky, you have a roof window room. If there is a loft between you and the slates, you have a sun tunnel room.

From a survey above a first-floor landing

Some homes end up with both: a roof window in the loft conversion and a tunnel carrying light to the landing below it. The two do not compete. Our comparison of a sun tunnel or roof window sets out the differences room by room, and the page on roof window installation covers the other side of the choice.

If you are not sure which type of product fits the room, the overview of the types of rooflight puts all of them side by side.

Once the ceiling is closed you never see the tube again, yet its type and route set how much light reaches the room.

A rigid tube is made from straight lengths of reflective metal, joined to one another and angled with fixed elbows where the route turns. The surface is smooth and highly reflective, so more light survives the journey. It is the better choice wherever the line from roof to ceiling is straight or needs only a single bend.

A flexible tube is a ribbed, foil-lined tube that bends to follow the route. It is the right answer when the loft is cluttered with timbers, pipes, wiring or a water tank, and a straight run is not available. It loses more light than rigid, because the ribs scatter some of what they carry, but in a tight loft it gets you a tunnel where a rigid tube would not fit at all.

Plenty of installations use both: rigid where the route is straight, then a flexible section to pass an obstruction. Our guide to choosing a rigid or flexible sun tunnel explains how the choice affects the light and the price.

Much of the work in a sun tunnel installation is planning the line the tube takes between the roof and the ceiling.

The survey begins in the loft. We look at where the rafters run, where the ceiling joists sit beneath them, and what else shares the space. Pipes, cables, a cold-water tank, a chimney breast, bracing timbers and the existing insulation all affect the route. The tube has to fit between the structural timbers without cutting any of them, because a circle that lines up with the gaps between the rafters and joists is much simpler and stronger than one that does not.

The tube is then plotted on paper and, where we can, marked out with a pole from the loft hatch. You can see where the dome will sit on the roof from outside, and where the diffuser will appear on the ceiling from inside. We move either one until the line is both clean and where you want the light.

When the loft is a boarded storage space with a ladder and a light, the work is straightforward. When it is a low, cut-up roof space, we take longer and say so. Our answer on whether a sun tunnel can go through a loft covers the common cases, from an open loft to one that has been converted.

A flat roof makes the tube short, which is good for light, and it brings its own checks on the roof covering.

On a flat-roofed extension or a bungalow, the ceiling and the roof are only a short distance apart, because the roof build-up is the same depth as the joists. A tunnel here is mostly a diffuser, a very short tube and a dome, so the light that reaches the room is close to what the dome gathers. It is the strongest argument for a tunnel in a kitchen extension that has a dark inner corner or a bathroom at the back of a single-storey addition.

On a flat roof, the weathering needs the most attention. The dome sits on a kerb, the kerb has to be dressed into the roof covering, and the covering may be felt, rubber or fibreglass, each with its own way of being sealed. A roof that is close to the end of its life makes a poor base for any new opening, and we tell you if the sensible choice is to deal with the covering at the same time.

Our short answer on whether a sun tunnel can go on a flat roof sets out the common set-ups. If a bigger flat opening is what the room really needs, take a look at flat roof rooflights.

The dome is small, but the way it meets your roof covering is some of the most careful work in the job.

On a pitched roof, the tunnel arrives with a flashing kit that is matched to the roof covering: slate, plain tile, interlocking tile or pantile. Each profile needs a different apron, different side pieces and a different way of lapping with the surrounding covering. We lift the slates or tiles around the position, fix the kerb to the roof timbers, then dress the flashing in so that each course of covering laps over it and water is carried away down the slope. Then the covering is put back around the dome.

The dome itself is a clear, impact-resistant moulding, so it can take hail and the weight of a bird without a problem. Some are domed up high and others are almost flat, and a low-profile dome is usually the better look on a visible slope at the front of a house. Dome and kerb samples travel with us to the survey, so you can see what you are choosing before it goes on the roof.

Where the roof is older, the tiles and slates around the position matter too. We lift only what the flashing needs and make sure the surrounding covering is sound and well fixed before we close it up. The work is photographed as it goes, before it is covered, and the photographs go into your handover pack.

A cold tube running through a cold loft above a warm bathroom tends to gather droplets on the inside, and the fitting is what prevents it.

The tube passes through the coldest part of the house. Warm, damp air from the room can rise through the diffuser and meet that cold surface, so the diffuser is sealed to the ceiling and the tube is wrapped with insulation through the loft space. The joints in the tube are sealed too. The aim is a closed run, so that moist air cannot travel up into the tube and settle there, and the dome end of the tube is closed by the glazing itself.

Bathrooms are where condensation is most likely, and good extraction helps there with or without a tunnel. A bathroom fan that vents outside does more for the tube than any other single thing, because it takes the steam out of the room before it climbs. If you do not have one, we say so at the survey, and we can talk about adding one at the same time.

A tube is only as dry as the ceiling seal beneath it, so we look at the diffuser ring as closely as we look at the dome.

From a bathroom survey

The long answer, including what a pane of misted glass would mean, is on our page about whether sun tunnels cause condensation.

From inside the house, the diffuser is the only part you ever see, so we finish it as carefully as the work above it.

The diffuser is a round, frosted panel set into the ceiling in a trim ring. It spreads the light so you see a soft disc rather than a bright tube end, and it keeps the room private. We cut the ceiling to the exact size, fix the trim ring to the plasterboard, and seal the gap between ring and ceiling so that no air and no steam can pass. Where the ceiling is lath and plaster, as it is in many older terraces, we plan the cut with extra care and protect the surrounding plaster.

The ring is usually white and sits almost flush, and after it is fixed the ceiling around it is made good and painted if you have asked us to do the decoration. If you would rather decorate yourself, the quote shows the finishing as its own line and we leave the ceiling ready for you.

Plan for the evenings as well as the day. A tunnel gives no light after dark, so the room still needs its ordinary lighting, and the best arrangement is usually to leave the existing light where it is. Some ranges offer a light fitting built into the diffuser, which can be fitted at the same time if you want one. We talk through the options at the survey.

A sun tunnel is a small change to a roof, and the rules treat it that way, but it is still a new opening and the conditions still apply.

A house can normally take a rooflight as permitted development under the roof-alteration rules, so long as it projects no more than 150mm above the roof plane and its top edge is no higher than the roof's highest point. A sun tunnel dome is a low, shallow shape, so it normally meets the height condition easily. On a side slope the glazing must be obscure and fixed unless any opening part is over 1.7m above the floor, which a frosted dome with no opening part satisfies. The conditions are listed in our skylight planning permission guide.

A sun tunnel in a flat or maisonette cannot rely on permitted development, so it needs an application, and a listed building needs listed building consent. For a house in a conservation area, permitted development carries on, although some streets fall under an Article 4 direction that withdraws it and only the council can say which. City of York Council covers York and its villages. Past the boundary the authority could be Leeds City Council, East Riding of Yorkshire Council or North Yorkshire Council, and at the survey we tell you which one applies to your address.

A new opening in the roof needs Building Regulations approval for its structure and thermal performance, and the glazed parts are expected to meet the rooflight standard, a U-value of 2.2 W/m²K or better. We arrange the Building Control notification, and give you the completion paperwork at handover. If you want to know more, our answer on whether skylights need Building Regulations goes further.

A sun tunnel is a short job, and the main thing to settle is how the day runs around the work in your loft and on your landing.

Before we start, the area below is protected. Dust sheets go down on the stairs, the landing and the floor along the route from the front door, and furniture is covered or moved. A loft hatch is a small opening for a lot of coming and going, so the hatch edges and the route up to it get particular attention. Where the layout allows, we screen the working area from the rest of the house.

The roof is opened only when the forecast is dry. The dome and kerb go on, the flashing is dressed in, and the covering is put back around them, so the opening is closed by the end of the working day. If the weather turns, we close the opening with a fixed cover rather than leave it for later.

Most single tunnels are a short job from roof to handover. The details change with the roof, the loft and the length of the run, and our answer to how long a sun tunnel takes to fit explains what makes one quicker or slower. The page on how we work describes the care in the home in full.

The tunnel itself is only part of the figure, so we price from a survey and put each cost on its own line.

The written quote lists the tunnel, the flashing, the tube run, the ceiling work and the paperwork separately, so each cost can be checked on its own. Our guide to what a sun tunnel costs, fitted goes through each line, and the general page on costs explains how we quote.

When the diffuser is in and the dust is cleared, we walk you through what has been done and what you now own.

A sun tunnel needs very little. The dome can be rinsed from time to time, and a soft brush on a long pole will do for most of it. Dirt on the outside lowers the light a little, but nothing inside needs attention. If the room above has trees or a chimney nearby, the dome will collect leaves and soot sooner, and a rinse after the autumn will tell you what you are dealing with.

The guarantee covers our workmanship: the way the kerb and flashing meet the roof, the tube run, the seals and the ceiling work. You can read the terms on our guarantee page. To arrange a survey, send us a few details using the form below, and we will come to you and look at the loft and the dark room together.