Skylights and rooflights in Kingsteignton

Kingsteignton was a village long before it was a suburb, and the houses still show both lives: low stone cottages near the church, and rows of semis whose roofs all share the same pitch and tile. The old centre around the parish church and the streets that run off it still holds stone and render cottages, some of them cob, alongside Victorian and Edwardian terraces built as the town grew. For a long time the place lived on the clay beneath it: Kingsteignton is known for ball clay, and the working history of the pits and the river quays shaped where the terraces and workers' houses went.

Most of what you see now is newer, and the streets show it: the roofs are regular, the lofts are open and the ceilings are flat. A great deal of the town was built from the middle of the twentieth century onwards, first as council and private estates of semis and bungalows, then as larger developments of detached family homes and, more recently, new-build streets towards the edges. Those homes dominate the housing stock, and they are the ones most often asking for a roof window in a loft, a lantern on a kitchen extension or a sun tunnel over a dark hall.

Plenty of owners here have already extended, and many are now looking at what the new roof could do for the rooms beneath it. A rear kitchen with a flat roof, a garage turned into a family room, a conservatory replaced with a solid roof: each of these makes a good home for a rooflight, and each leaves a different ceiling to finish around it.

For a house in Kingsteignton the starting point is national permitted development, which lets most ordinary homes take a rooflight without an application so long as the standard limits for how far the unit stands proud, how high it sits and what is allowed in a side slope are observed. The detail is in the planning half of our Devon guide.

Three situations change that. Flats and maisonettes are outside householder rights altogether, which means planning permission for a rooflight. A listed building needs consent for outside changes. And where a home sits in a conservation area, an Article 4 direction can remove the usual allowance. If your house is close to the old village centre, check with Teignbridge District Council whether any designation applies to your street, because that is the part of the town where it is most likely to matter.

The estates and new-build streets are a different matter. Occasionally a developer has removed permitted development rights by a planning condition on the original permission, so a newer home is worth checking too. We can tell you what to ask the council.

Planning and Building Regulations are separate. Whatever the planning answer, a new rooflight or a whole-unit replacement is building work, and the notification to Building Control is ours.

Kingsteignton's housing sorts itself into a few types, each with a natural choice:

• Loft conversions on 1960s to 1990s semis: a roof window on the rear slope, with a centre-pivot or top-hung opening.
• Kitchen and family-room extensions: a roof lantern or low flat glass, with the kerb finished neatly from below.
• Dark landings, hallways and bathrooms: a sun tunnel, cut through the ceiling and loft with a small hole.
• Older terraces and cottages: a conservation rooflight where the roof is slate and the street cares about appearance.

A south or west-facing slope can make a loft bedroom warm in summer, and a motorised opening unit high in the slope releases it.

For a VELUX loft window the first choice is between a centre-pivot sash, which turns in the middle and is easy to clean, and a top-hung one, which opens outwards and suits a steeper roof. Frames are offered in painted pine or polyurethane, and polyurethane copes better with a bathroom or kitchen. We cover the options in our guide to VELUX window installation.

A south or west-facing slope can make a loft bedroom warm in summer, and a motorised opening unit high in the slope releases it. Glass overhead is best laminated on the inside, which is good practice and industry guidance rather than a Part K requirement.

Kingsteignton is a short run from Newton Abbot and not far from the A380, so a survey visit is simple to arrange. We begin outside, noting the roof covering, pitch and position, then climb into the loft to see how the roof is built and take the distance down to the ceiling. Below, we test the ceiling for material and soundness.

Many of the newer streets have driveways and open frontages, which makes access easy and lets us unload glass close to the door. Older roads near the centre can be tighter, and where scaffolding would have to rest on the pavement or road, Devon County Council, as highway authority, must issue a licence. We plan for that before pricing.

You then get a written price that is settled before work starts. We keep the dust down, leave the room clean and give a 10-year workmanship guarantee on what we fit, whether the job is a single sun tunnel over a hall or a lantern on a new kitchen. If a loft, a landing or a garage conversion on your street needs looking at, the quote form is the quickest route, or you can email info@brightviewskylightsexeter.co.uk. Next door we also cover Newton Abbot next door, and you can see the whole patch on our areas page or start from the homepage.