Rooflights and skylights in Littleport

What every roof in the town shares is the ground it stands on. The land around Littleport is drained fen, flat for miles in most directions, so there is very little to interrupt the sky above a roof slope: no hillside, no ridge line, and beyond the built-up streets not much taller than a hedge or a line of trees. That openness is the single biggest fact about daylight here, and it applies to a terrace built before the First World War just as much as to a house finished last year. Our light planning method, used across Cambridge and the towns and villages around it, starts from that openness rather than from a standard unit picked off a list, because the position and glass that suit an exposed fen roof are not always the ones that suit a sheltered street in a hillier town.

The rest of this page works through the two kinds of housing that make up most of Littleport, the planning rules that East Cambridgeshire District Council applies here, and the wind and light that come with a roof on this part of the fen.

Nearly all of these roofs sit on factory-made trusses rather than rafters cut on site, and plenty finish with a hip rather than running to a full gable, which leaves a shorter flat stretch of slope to work with on each side than the roofline suggests from the road. We measure in from where the hip timbers actually meet the level of the roof rather than guess at it, and keep any opening inside that stretch; only where a household wants something wider does the job call for an engineer to work out how the trusses either side would carry the load, with that calculation submitted alongside the Building Control paperwork. A garage turned into a playroom, or a conservatory tacked onto the back of the house, brings its own low, often near-flat roof, and a single modest rooflight usually suits that kind of space better than a large lantern would.

The single storey kitchen and family room additions built onto the back of these houses, whether they went up when the estate was new or have been added since, are flat roofed almost without exception, and they are where a flat roof rooflight or a compact roof lantern earns its place best: the glass can sit squarely above a dining table or a run of worktop instead of throwing light onto a wall that has a window in it already. A sun tunnel is often the better answer for an internal bathroom or hallway on these estates, where there is loft space overhead but no roof slope close enough to reach.

A slope facing south, with nothing above it to block the sky, catches direct sun for a good part of the middle of the day across most of the year: low and welcome, reaching deep into a room through December, then climbing high overhead by June and July, when the same opening can turn a room warm fairly quickly unless the glass is chosen to control it. Turn to a north-facing slope instead and a room gets a calm, constant wash of daylight with barely any glare, which works well over a desk, in a home office, or on a stairwell where brightness matters more than a bright spot on the carpet. East catches the first sun of the day and west the last of it, both low enough in the sky to catch a screen or a table across the room rather than simply warming the floor under the window.

One thing does temper the exposure here, and it is easy to overlook. Where a garden is bounded by a tall hedge rather than a fence or wall, it can break the wind across an otherwise flat plot. A tall boundary hedge does little to shade a two storey roof, but it can shade a single storey rear extension roof for part of the day far more than an open aspect would suggest, especially in autumn and spring when the sun sits lower. We look at what actually shades a slope, hedge, fence, neighbour or nothing at all, rather than assume from the flat land alone.

That same lack of shelter shows up in the weather a roof takes, not only the light it gets. A house standing right at the edge of town, with open fen on one side and nothing to break the wind, meets driven rain harder than one boxed in among other roofs nearer the centre, so choosing flashing to suit the actual tile or slate covering, and fixings strong enough to stop a sash lifting in a gust, matters more here than it would mid-terrace. Fitting an electric opening rooflight with a rain sensor means a window left open on a warm afternoon shuts itself within seconds of the first drops, which is worth having on a roof that takes more of a battering than most.

What we look at underneath the covering depends on the house. A terrace gets its cut rafters and any earlier rear extension checked for how they meet the neighbour's; an estate house gets its truss spacing measured and its hips located, since that decides how wide an opening can go without an engineer's input. Whether the property is listed, and whether the address needs anything checking against East Cambridgeshire District Council's current position, gets settled at the same visit rather than guessed from the house's age or style. Everything from that visit goes into a short written light plan attached to your quote: where the opening sits, its size and glazing, what shading the slope calls for, and whether the work needs a planning application, a Building Control notification, or neither.

Every installation is finished with plastering and making good inside, and carries our 10-year workmanship guarantee. Southward towards Ely the ground rises onto the isle; further out into the fen the villages open up again, and we work to the same method on all of it. If price is what you are trying to work out first, the costs page sets out what actually drives it, and if you are unsure which way your own roof faces, our guide to skylight orientation is worth reading before you get in touch. Ready to move ahead, book a light survey, or message us on WhatsApp in the meantime.