Skylights and rooflights in Chudleigh

Chudleigh's centre looks the way it does because of a fire in 1807, which destroyed a large part of the town. What replaced it went up in a short span of years, so the main streets carry a fairly consistent run of Georgian and Regency houses in render or brick, with sash windows, slate roofs and shallow eaves. Down the older lanes you meet something quite different: cob and stone cottages that escaped the fire, thick-walled and low, with roofs that have been re-covered several times.

Behind the main streets, Victorian additions, workshops turned into homes and rear extensions fill the long plots. Further out the town runs into twentieth century housing: interwar semis, postwar estates and bungalows, and newer developments climbing the hillside, mostly in brick or render.

That spread is why we ask early which street you live on.

Each of these has its own ceiling and its own roof build, so a loft conversion on one street and a kitchen lantern on the next can need almost nothing in common. That spread is why we ask early which street you live on. It tells us more about the job than the size of the opening does.

Most Chudleigh houses can have a rooflight without a planning application, provided the general permitted-development limits are met. Those limits are laid out in the Devon guide to planning and building rules, so there is no need to repeat them here. What matters locally is whether your particular house is one of the exceptions.

The middle of Chudleigh is a conservation area. That alone does not stop a rooflight, but Teignbridge can take the usual rights away by means of an Article 4 direction, so find out from the council whether your street falls inside one before choosing a design. A number of buildings in town are also listed, and for those a new rooflight, or any cut into old roof timbers, calls for listed building consent.

A flat above a converted shop, or a house split into units, has no householder rights at all, so a rooflight there needs a planning application. Chudleigh is close to Dartmoor but the town itself is outside the national park, so the district council rather than the park authority is the one to ask.

On a slate roof within the conservation area, a slim conservation rooflight at the back is much easier to agree than a standard window at the front. What makes them different is covered on our conservation rooflights page.

Product choice in Chudleigh follows the street as much as the room.

In the Georgian centre the best answer is usually a conservation rooflight placed on the back slope, sized to the slates and to the proportions of the room beneath. The cob and stone cottages call for something smaller, a modest conservation rooflight or roof window sized to fit between uneven rafters.

a north hall is better with clear glass of a high thermal rating that lets in all the daylight the frame will allow

Victorian and interwar loft rooms take a roof window with a laminated inner pane, or a VELUX window where the roof suits it. Extensions at the back, whether kitchen or garden room, are where a lantern or a low flat rooflight on an insulated kerb can fill the space with light. For a landing, hall or bathroom with no roof directly above, a sun tunnel reaches where a full rooflight cannot.

Glazing follows the room. A bedroom under tile facing south can get hot in summer, so solar control glass deserves a look, while a north hall is better with clear glass of a high thermal rating that lets in all the daylight the frame will allow. An opening or electric unit near the ridge also lets warm air out of the top of the house, and Part F treats opening rooflights as a contribution to purge ventilation.

Whichever you choose, the work meets current Building Regulations, and that includes the Part L figures for heat lost through new and replacement glazing.

A kitchen or garden room added to the back of a Chudleigh house is often where the biggest piece of glass goes. A lantern over the dining end lets daylight reach the middle of a deep room, and the kerb is lined inside so the reveal looks like part of the ceiling instead of a box set into it.

Getting to Chudleigh from Exeter is a quick run down the A38, so booking a visit is simple. We start outside, looking at the roof slope by slope, then go indoors and up into the loft to measure from roof to ceiling, check the ceiling's material and how it has aged, and record anything likely to shape the finish, from cornice work to a hairline crack that already points at the proposed opening.

The streets in the old centre are narrow and parking is limited, so access is part of the visit, meaning where a van can stop to unload and whether there is room for a tower or scaffold. On the hillside roads we look at how a delivery will actually reach the house. If the house is listed or in the conservation area, the survey also gathers what is needed to back an application to Teignbridge.

A Georgian terrace and a cob cottage get very different quotes, and each arrives in writing with its lining details included. Nothing is booked until you are happy with them. Dust is contained, the room is cleaned afterwards and the 10-year workmanship guarantee covers the finished job. The quote form is the simplest way to start, and a message to us on WhatsApp, or an email to info@brightviewskylightsexeter.co.uk, gets a reply too. If you send a photo of the street frontage and the room below the roof, we can often say at once what kind of survey the house needs.

We also work in Kingsteignton and Bovey Tracey. Our homepage covers the full range of skylight and rooflight installation, and the areas page shows everywhere else we cover.