Adding sky lights to extension

[okgo]

For reasons beyond me, the house we have bought had a large single story kitchen extension built, it goes out a good few meters and is the width of the house with the usual glass sliding doors that are also the width of the house. However, the house has a NW facing rear and the ceiling of said extension doesn’t have any windows in the roof. Therefore even with a wall of glass, it’s not the brightest room.

Am I being naive in thinking it wouldn’t be a huge job to add a few skylights/one long glass light panel to get some light into the place?

Thought I’d ask here to get a rough idea of scale of work before entertaining getting a proper quote.

[trickywoo]

Wouldn’t be a major undertaking.

Flat or pitched roof?

[okgo]

trickywoo said:

Wouldn’t be a major undertaking.

Flat or pitched roof?

Flat.

Thought it may not have been allowed as in a conservation area but other neighbours have them.

[smokey mow]

It depends on what your definition of a huge job is, but to fit a single long roof light within an existing roof you’d be removing most of the tiles or felt to the outside and the ceiling to the inside to expose the structure.

Once exposed they’ll be joists/rafters that will need cutting and others that need doubling or trebbling up and bolting. In some cases you may need flitch beams if the window is particularly long.

After that there’s then all the making good.

Slightly less disruptive will be 2/3 smaller roof windows but still expect a weeks work to get the majority done excluding the decorating.

[gangzoom]

smokey mow said:

Once exposed they’ll be joists/rafters that will need cutting and others that need doubling or trebbling up and bolting. In some cases you may need flitch beams if the window is particularly long.

For the same reason as the OP(getting light into the whole house), we have skylights running down the spine of the house and a few Velux windows. But because it was all in the initial design all the roof structures are build around the openings. Though am still unsure why the structural engineers speced steels around the largest roof light (3 meters long).

So yes, don't underestimate the structural work that might be needed if you want to add a large amount of glazing in the roof.

[smokey mow]

gangzoom said:

Though am still unsure why the structural engineers speced steels around the largest roof light (3 meters long).

That would be a big ask for a timber trimmer, and with a 3m long piece of glass the last thing you want is any deflection in the roof.

In this situation it’s much easier to fit couple of extra steels than the alternative which would be to specify steel flitch plates between timber trimmers.

[okgo]

A week wouldn’t be too bad.

What do we reckon to the nearest ten thousand in price?

[Snow and Rocks]

We added a couple of extra Velux windows a couple of years back. Went with longest (1180) that would fit between the existing timbers (550mm) and it was a pretty trivial job to get a local roofer to stick them in.

Obviously a different job given we have a pitched slate roof but it's worth having a look at your existing timbers and seeing if you can squeeze something in without doing any serious structural work.

Ours was £920 all in including the two windows for reference and the work was done by one guy in a fairly relaxed day. (so I guess free to the nearest £10k!)

[Pheo]

If you keep them reasonably sized and fixed the actual skylight isn’t too big a deal, it’s all the making good where costs will rise eg replacement roof covering needed, decoration of the internals I suspect where the cost will add up a bit.

[Sheepshanks]

Snow and Rocks said:

We added a couple of extra Velux windows a couple of years back. Went with longest (1180) that would fit between the existing timbers (550mm) and it was a pretty trivial job to get a local roofer to stick them in.

Obviously a different job given we have a pitched slate roof but it's worth having a look at your existing timbers and seeing if you can squeeze something in without doing any serious structural work.

Ours was £920 all in including the two windows for reference and the work was done by one guy in a fairly relaxed day. (so I guess free to the nearest £10k!)

Are you sure about the cost - we had a couple as part of our extension/refurb so the cost was all in, but at the time I looked up the pricing at an online seller and the windows and flashing kits were about that sort of price, and I think that was ex-VAT.

[Snow and Rocks]

Sheepshanks said:

Are you sure about the cost - we had a couple as part of our extension/refurb so the cost was all in, but at the time I looked up the pricing at an online seller and the windows and flashing kits were about that sort of price, and I think that was ex-VAT.

Yep, just checked back my messages with the roofer. It was in 2020 though rather than the couple of years back I suggested - time flies!

I do remember asking him about the price at the time and apparently there was quite a bit of discount available on the windows through his usual supplier. It also included slating in the lead flashing for the woodburner I was fitting at the same time.

Like I said, not directly relevant to the OP but posted to show that it doesn't necessarily need to be complicated and cost thousands.

Edited by Snow and Rocks on Sunday 9th February 00:02

Edited by Snow and Rocks on Sunday 9th February 00:04

[okgo]

Good to know.

I’ll get a quote.