Rooflights and skylights fitted in Alltwen

Alltwen, sometimes written Allt-wen, is a village in the Swansea Valley, which the Welsh call Cwmtawe. It forms part of the community of Cilybebyll, and it is administered separately from Pontardawe, which lies on the opposite bank of the River Tawe. Alltwen lies 9.0 road miles north-east of Swansea, well inside the 30-mile ring we work in.

The village has one famous son. Ronnie James, the British lightweight boxing champion of the 1940s, came from Alltwen, and he challenged for a world title in 1946.

Its neighbours include Pontardawe, Rhos, Glais and Clydach, and we cover all of them.

On any hillside, a house’s back slope can face the valley or face the hill, and the direction a roof faces decides the light in the room below. A slope that faces away from the sun gives a steady, soft light that suits a bedroom, and one that faces the sun gives brighter patches that move through the day.

The same is true of views. A roof window in a slope that looks over the valley gives you sky and a line of hills from a bed or a bath, and a window facing the hill gives a view of the rising ground and a lot of sky above it. Both can be worth having, and which one is on offer depends on the way your house is turned, which is something you can check from the garden before anyone visits.

Wind exposure also differs from one roof to the next. A roof high on a slope meets the weather before one in a fold of the hill, so the fixings and the flashing carry more of the load. A survey is how that exposure gets judged, since photographs flatten a slope and hide the line of the neighbouring trees.

For planning, Alltwen belongs to Neath Port Talbot Council, although the community around it is Cilybebyll. Our records give Neath Port Talbot as the planning authority for the village, and the council can confirm that for a particular address. The Gower AONB lies elsewhere, and the village is outside it.

Whether a house can take a rooflight without applying depends on the unit and where it will sit on the roof. The conditions are collected in our guide to planning for skylights in Wales. Read it, then check the position against your own plans.

The householder route is not open to every home. Flats and maisonettes cannot use it. A council can switch it off for houses with an Article 4 direction, and an earlier planning permission may have switched it off already. A listed house must have listed building consent for a rooflight that would change its special character, which is governed by the Historic Environment (Wales) Act 2023 and explained by Cadw on its listed building consent page.

Two more points can be checked early. One is whether the house has ever been extended, since the original roof is the benchmark the rules measure from. The other is whether the room below is a bedroom, because a roof window that serves as an escape route has to meet size and height conditions in Approved Document B (Wales).

When the position is unclear, Neath Port Talbot’s planning team can give you its view of the case, and a Lawful Development Certificate then fixes the answer in a document you can keep, which is useful if the house changes hands.

Building Regulations come next. A new rooflight will in general need approval, and the Welsh Government’s roof lights note gives the reasons: the roof is opened up, and what is left has to carry the unit. You can use the council’s own building control, or a registered building control approver. Where the job is notifiable, we do the notifying.

Putting in a like-for-like replacement roof window counts as building work. Repairing a window does not. The energy limit for a roof window that is new or replaces another is 1.4 W/m²K, or a Window Energy Rating of Band B, in Approved Document L (Wales).

Start at the top. A loft bedroom in a pitched roof can take a roof window, top-hung so it swings out above head height or centre-pivot so it turns for cleaning from inside. Trees nearby make cleaning more frequent, so the pivot has its attractions. A window that opens can also be fitted with an electric opener, and the rain sensor on VELUX’s solar and electric models closes the sash once rain begins.

A landing in the middle of the house is the dark corner in many homes. A sun tunnel draws daylight through a dome on the roof, down a mirrored tube, to a diffuser on the ceiling. In steady drizzle it gives the stairs a gentle light, and the dome is small enough to shed the water.

The kitchen is usually at the back, often in an extension with a flat roof. A flat roof rooflight lights a modest room, and a roof lantern gives height as well as light to a larger one. With trees close by, the outlet and the kerb need to stay clear, and the rooflight has to be fitted where you can get at it. A rooflight in Wales should reach 2.2 W/m²K.

A garden room or a large extension may take a lantern on a builder’s upstand. Brett Martin, which makes lanterns, specifies a minimum height for that upstand and prefers it built level. A lantern that belongs to a new-build extension raises a planning point, and the council is asked about it before the quote is fixed.

Bathrooms sit between the two. A roof window above a shower needs glazing that stays warm, an extractor that outlasts the steam, and, in Wales, glazing that meets the safety rules in Approved Document N. VELUX offer a laminated inner pane as an option, and which windows can have it depends on the model.

Roof windows also look different from the inside depending on how far down the slope they sit. A window set low gives a view as well as light, and one set high lights the middle of the room and keeps the wall space below it free for furniture. The choice depends on what the room is for, and it is easier to make once you have stood in the room and looked up.

A rooflight you already own may show damp trapped inside the glass, which is a sign the sealed unit has given out. We replace them, and misted rooflights covers the work.

An Alltwen job begins with a survey that costs nothing. A quote in writing, at a fixed figure, comes afterwards, and the finished work is covered by a 10-year workmanship guarantee on paper. Phone 01792 929062, or send the online survey request.