Velux & Skylight Installation in Falkirk & Central Scotland

The opening mechanism is the choice that most affects how you live with the window, and it costs surprisingly little to get right at the start.

Centre-pivot is the standard and the cheapest. The sash rotates about its middle, so the handle sits along the top, which means it works perfectly with a bed or desk underneath. It also rotates a full 180 degrees and locks, so you can clean the outside of the glass from inside. The downside is that the open sash needs clear headroom in front of it.

Top-hung is hinged at the top and pushes outward like a door, giving an uninterrupted view and room to stand with your head at the opening — good in a converted loft. It costs a bit more, and because the handle is at the bottom, it is a poor choice above a bed.

Electric and solar versions earn their keep on windows you cannot reach — high in a vaulted ceiling or above a stairwell. Solar is the sensible retrofit because it needs no cabling through a finished ceiling. Both usually include a rain sensor, which here is not a gimmick.

For a windowless bathroom, box room or landing with no roof slope to work with, a sun tunnel brings daylight down a reflective tube from a small dome. It will not ventilate, but it turns a dark space into a usable one.

The window is the easy part. What keeps it dry for twenty years is the flashing kit and the collars around it, and this is where the difference between a roofer and a general fitter shows.

Kits come in types for different coverings: one for flat coverings a few millimetres thick — natural slate, most of Falkirk’s older stock — and another for profiled interlocking tiles. Fit a flat-profile kit to a profiled tile and there is a gap under every roll; fit a profiled kit to slate and it will not sit down. A recessed option sets the window deeper for a flush finish, which looks better on slate.

Beneath the metalwork, a proper installation has an underfelt collar taking any water that gets past the covering onto the membrane below, and an insulating collar closing the gap between frame and trimmed timbers. Skipping the underfelt collar is the commonest cause of a roof window that seems to leak in driving rain but tests fine with a hose.

What we will not do is bed a roof window in mortar or seal it with mastic. On our slate roofing in Falkirk and tiled roofing in Falkirk pages the same principle applies: the detail should work without sealant.

Whether a roof window is straightforward or a project comes down to how your roof is built — in Falkirk, mostly the age of the house.

Cut roofs — the traditional rafters, purlins and ridge found on Victorian and Edwardian villas and most housing up to the mid-1960s — are relatively easy to open up, since rafters can be trimmed and doubled around an opening by ordinary carpentry.

Trussed rafter roofs, standard from the late 1960s and so covering most of the estates around Falkirk, Grangemouth, Larbert and Polmont, are different. A truss is an engineered structure where every member is doing a job, and none can be cut without a designed replacement. In practice a small window can often go between existing trusses without touching any; anything wider needs a structural design. We tell you which you have at the survey.

Be clear-eyed about what a rooflight does. In an unconverted loft it brings light and makes the space usable, but it does not turn the loft into a habitable room — that needs headroom, a floor structure that will carry the load, a compliant staircase, insulation and a means of escape. A roof window can serve as that escape window if it is the right size and height, which is why the regulations often decide where it goes.

Where you want floor area rather than light, a dormer is the alternative — a bigger job with a flat roof of its own, covered on flat roofing in Falkirk. For many people two well-placed roof windows deliver most of the benefit for far less.

Planning permission is not normally needed for a roof window on a house, because it usually falls within permitted development. What matters is that it should not project materially beyond the plane of the roof slope, and that permitted development rights are restricted on flats, listed buildings and conservation areas — which in Falkirk includes Arnothill, Dollar Park and the town centre, where a new opening on a street-facing slope is likely to need consent.

A building warrant is separate from planning and is handled by Falkirk Council’s building standards service. Swapping a failed window for a new one in the same opening, with no change to the structure, is repair and does not normally need one. Forming a new opening that alters structural members can, and any loft conversion creating a habitable room certainly does — that carries requirements for escape, structure, insulation and fire separation that have nothing to do with the window.

We check what applies to your address before quoting rather than after. Scottish warrant paperwork is already part of what we do for solid conservatory roof replacements.

A sealed double-glazed unit does not last forever. When the perimeter seal fails, moisture gets between the panes and you get permanent misting no amount of cleaning touches — typically fifteen to twenty-five years in. Once it has, the unit is finished as an insulator as well as a view.

On a fairly recent window it can be worth sourcing a replacement pane. On anything older it is better value to change the complete unit, because by then the timber, seals, hinges and flashing are all the same age as the glass. Whichever we do, the flashing kit is renewed — old flashing that has been sealed and re-sealed is exactly what causes the drips people blame on the new window.

A straight replacement is usually half a day to a day. A new window cut into a slate or tiled roof, including framing, flashing and internal lining, is typically one to two days, and a second on the same slope adds little. We will not open a roof up in high wind — we would rather move you by a day than rush a covering that has to be watertight that night.

Spend a moment on the glass at the survey. Laminated inner panes are sensible over a bed or a stair, obscure glazing suits bathrooms, and solar-control coatings are worth considering on a south-facing slope. Noise-reduction glazing genuinely helps with heavy rain on the pane, the most common complaint we hear about roof windows here. Plan blinds at the same time, particularly blackout in a bedroom, given how light Scottish summer nights are.