Skylights & rooflights in Maltby

Around that core are the colliery-era terraces, in brick, in plain rows, with slate or tile roofs and low back kitchens. Their lofts are shallow, so a roof window follows the rafter gap and not the room beneath. Pairs of narrower windows suit them better than one wide one.

Beyond the terraces, the planned estates fill most of the town. Semi-detached houses with hipped tile roofs, set back from the road with front lawns, run through street after street. Bungalows are frequent in some of these, and a bungalow roof room may rely on a roof window as its way out, provided the size and the sill height are right. We measure both at the survey.

At the town's edges are the newest closes, where trussed roofs are standard. The trusses are engineered, so a wide cut through them needs designed trimmers and the structure approved first. Narrow windows that fit between trusses are a simpler job.

Maltby sits on higher, more open ground than much of the Rotherham area, with long views across fields to the east. Rain and wind come in off that open ground, and a roof facing east or south-west takes them head on. We look at which way a roof faces and how much stands between it and the weather, then pick flashing and glazing that match.

Older extensions here often carry a rooflight from an earlier generation, a plastic dome or a thin single pane that loses heat and drips in winter. Swapping it for an insulated glass unit on a new kerb keeps the room bright without the chill, and a wider opening can take a lantern if the joists allow it.

A number of the older houses have been altered several times, and the roof is often the best record of it. Different tiles in one patch, a join in the ridge, a boxed-in valley: all of it tells us how the loads run. Before any opening is cut we find out what was done before, since that decides whether the timbers can be trimmed or need to be strengthened.

The hipped tile semi is common across the planned estates in Maltby, and a rooflight choice there plays out slowly. Concrete tile ages gently, so the parts to watch are the flashing at the frame, the seal round the glass and the blind or motor on the inside. Each of those can be reached from the loft or the room, which means a new inner pane or blind need not disturb the tiles. A hip adds one thing at survey: the rafters change direction near the corner, so an opening close to it needs more trimming. We measure the distance from the hip to the proposed frame, check the ridge for sag and look at the tile laps, since a tile that has slipped is better found before a frame goes beside it.