Rooflights and skylights fitted in Ogmore Vale

Until 1865 the Ogmore valley was a quiet, isolated hill farming district with fewer than ten farms and a handful of cottages. The valley's population in 1851 was probably under a hundred. Everything changed on 1 August 1865, when John Brogden and Sons opened the Ogmore Valley Railway for mineral, goods and passenger traffic, running from Porthcawl up to Nant-y-moel.

With the rail links to Bridgend through Tondu and to Porthcawl Dock complete, the valley's house coals and dry steam coals could be worked on a large scale. Aber, Caedu and Tynewydd collieries opened as drift mines, driven into the seams from the mountain sides. In the later months of 1865 Brogdens began sinking two shafts at Wyndham Colliery, to work the smokeless dry steam coals of the Lower Coal Measures. The company lost control within a few years, first through a merger in 1872 that produced the Llynvi, Tondu and Ogmore Coal and Iron Company, and then through that company's liquidation in 1878. Coal mining remained the village's main source of income until the 1980s.

Ogmore Vale is a village and electoral ward in the county borough of Bridgend. With Nant-y-moel and Price Town it makes up the community of Ogmore Valley. Nant-y-moel railway station was the setting for the film A Run for Your Money, made around 1948. We work in Nant-y-moel and in Pontycymer as well, and Ogmore Vale itself lies 27.6 miles by road from Swansea, to the east.

Some of the village's former school sites have been developed for housing. They include Craigrhwiglyn (Aber Boys), Fronwen and Tynewydd. Aber Infants, built in 1909, and Aber Girls, built in 1912, were pulled down in 2016, and a bat dwelling now stands in the yard of the old infants school to house the bat population of the schools.

A house put up on cleared school ground carries a younger roof than a house from the first rush of mining years, and a survey reads whichever roof is there. Newer or older, the same two questions open the job: what is the pitch, and what is the room underneath meant to feel like?

House or flat settles the first question. The householder rights apply to houses only, so flats and maisonettes need a planning application for any new rooflight. For a house, the limits on how far the glass stands out, how high it rises and which way the slope faces are all set down in the Wales planning guide, and that guide is the place to check a particular roof.

An Article 4 direction can switch those rights off across a whole area, and a clause in the first planning permission can switch them off for a single address. Neither shows on the face of a house, so the council is the place to ask. For Ogmore Vale that means Bridgend County Borough Council.

A listed building follows a separate road. A rooflight that changes its special character needs listed building consent under the Historic Environment (Wales) Act 2023, applied for through the local planning authority. The consent covers the inside of a listed building as well as the outside, and even small work can need it.

If the answer is still unclear, the council's planning team can say how it sees the case. A Lawful Development Certificate then fixes the position in writing.

Separate from all that sits the building side of the job. As a general rule a brand-new rooflight needs approval, since the roof is opened and the structure has to take the weight. Where the work is notifiable, we arrange the notification with the council's building control or a registered building control approver. Under Approved Document L (Wales) a replacement roof window should reach 1.4 W/m²K or Window Energy Rating Band B, and a rooflight 2.2 W/m²K.

Measuring a rooflight's U-value takes in the entire surface of the unit, which can be larger than the opening cut in the roof. A kerb supplied together with the glass is counted inside the 2.2 limit.

The free survey is the first step. The fixed written quote follows it, and a ten-year workmanship guarantee in writing arrives when the glass is in.

Bedrooms under the slope take a roof window that opens clear of the bed. A top-hung sash gives headroom, and a centre-pivot sash rotates so the outer glass can be wiped from inside. Motorised versions are covered on our page for electric opening rooflights.

A bathroom needs a window the steam can leave through, plus a fan. When an old window is swapped for a new one, the new one should leave the room's ventilation no worse than it was. Where the old frame had trickle vents, its successor should have vents at least that large, controllable by the occupant or automatically. A frame that had none, in a house that depends on natural ventilation, can be shown to leave the room no worse off by fitting vents of 4,000 mm² equivalent area in a bathroom.

A kitchen with a flat-roofed extension is where a flat roof rooflight belongs, raised on a kerb that keeps the water moving. A roof lantern is the taller version, and its place on a new extension is settled with the council first.

In a hallway under the loft there is neither wall nor roof slope to fit a window in. A sun tunnel suits that spot: a short run of tube joins a dome on the roof to a diffuser in the ceiling, and the dome is the only part the weather ever touches.

Glass ages. A misted rooflight has usually lost the seal in its sealed unit, and a replacement sealed unit can sometimes go into the frame already there. Swapping glass alone, with the frame kept, does not count as building work for the energy rules. Replacing a window like for like does.

Cutting a new opening, or enlarging one, brings an area limit into play: the windows and doors together should stay within a set share of the home's total floor area. From 4 March 2027 the new Welsh edition of the guidance counts roof windows and rooflights in that total, and allows a larger area where the home's energy efficiency is improved to compensate.

A loft bedroom brings the question of escape. A roof window can act as that escape route when its size and position suit an escape window, and our roof window Building Regulations page goes through it.

Wherever glass sits low, safety glazing comes into it. In Wales that is Approved Document N, which treats glazing between floor level and 800 mm in walls and partitions as a critical location. A roof window set low in a sloping wall of an attic room is worth checking against it.

For the survey, call 01792 929062 or send the form.