Rooflights and skylights fitted in Reynoldston

Reynoldston is a rural village and a community in the City and County of Swansea, set deep in the heart of the Gower peninsula. At the 2011 count its population stood at 439. The village also runs one of the longest-running community broadband schemes in the UK, which started in 2003 and kept going after ADSL arrived.

Measured by road, Swansea is 14.16 miles off, and Reynoldston lies to its west, inside the area we serve. Other places nearby where we work include Port Eynon, Penclawdd, Crofty and Southgate, Gower.

What follows describes house types in general, and makes no claim about how Reynoldston's houses were built. An older stone cottage normally has a pitched roof with a modest slope, which suits one carefully placed window. A bungalow, or a house from a later decade, tends to give a broader run of tiled roof to work with. At the back, a low extension with a flat roof can take a rooflight or a lantern.

Which description fits your house stays an open question until somebody has stood in the room and then looked at the roof from outside. Reynoldston has an unusual planning setting, so the next chapter takes that on before any product comes up. Anyone planning work in the village is better off knowing the planning answer first, since it decides whether the next step is a survey for a quote or a conversation with the council about the glass.

The village lies inside the Gower AONB. The Welsh Government's dataset of conservation-area boundaries includes one named Reynoldston, and it is drawn over the village's reference point. The dataset is not property-level, so whether a given house is inside the line is a question about its exact address. The council can answer it, and the City and County of Swansea conservation areas page is the place to begin.

Either designation changes the route for a rooflight. In Wales, a house on land in a conservation area, the Gower AONB, Bannau Brycheiniog National Park or a World Heritage Site cannot use permitted development to put a rooflight into a roof slope. It needs a planning application to the City and County of Swansea Council. The planning guide for Welsh skylights explains the rest, and the council's Gower AONB page describes the landscape designation.

That does not rule a rooflight out. It makes the application the first job instead of the last, and it brings the look of the glass into the conversation with the planning officer. Conservation rooflights are the range made with older buildings in mind, and our page on conservation rooflights shows what it covers. The back of the house is no different on this land: a flat-roofed extension needs the same application.

If the house is listed, the position is firmer. A rooflight that would affect its character as a building of special architectural or historic interest needs listed building consent under the Historic Environment (Wales) Act 2023. Cadw notes that replacing traditional windows with uPVC on a listed building will not normally be acceptable, and its advice on consent is the place to read before anything is ordered.

Elsewhere in the picture, householder permitted development never reached flats or maisonettes, and a council can strip it from houses with an Article 4 direction. The conditions on a house's first planning permission may have done it already. A Lawful Development Certificate puts the council's answer on paper.

Building Regulations ask a different question from planning, and they apply whether or not an application is needed. You choose between the council's building control team and a registered building control approver. Where work has to be notified, we do the notifying.

Take an older stone cottage with a slate roof and a bedroom tucked under the slope. A roof window sits flush with the slates, so it is the least conspicuous way to put a window in that slope. Whatever the glass looks like from the lane, it has to deal with rain on its outer face and condensation on the inner, so glazing and flashing matter as much as the frame.

Move to the back, to a flat-topped extension. Over a kitchen or dining room, the kerb-mounted glass of a flat roof rooflight throws light a good way in. A fall in the kerb, or in the roof around it, lets water leave, and a Welsh limit of 2.2 W/m²K applies to a rooflight. A roof lantern is a different object, since its upstand carries pitched glass. A lantern for an extension that has not been built yet is a question for the council at survey, as the planning route is not settled by a general rule.

Replacing an old roof window is simpler on paper. VELUX keeps a table of sizes, and the code on the metal plate at the head of the opening sash records the width and height. Inside the AONB or the conservation area a like-for-like swap may still raise a planning question, which is another reason to ask early. The new window should reach 1.4 W/m²K or Window Energy Rating Band B under Approved Document L (Wales).

Ventilation goes with any replacement. Approved Document F (Wales) wants a home left with ventilation at least as good as before, so vents the old window carried should be matched by vents on the new one, controllable by whoever lives there or automatically.

A loft bedroom under the slope is the room where a roof window earns its place, because the window lights the bed and the floor from above and gives the room a view of weather. In a bathroom the priority shifts: glazing that holds its warmth, and a fan that clears steam before it settles on glass. Glazing safety in Wales falls under Approved Document N, which looks at glass between floor level and 800 mm in walls, so the height of a window in a sloping wall is worth checking at survey.

Light can also arrive by tube. A sun tunnel serves a landing or an inner hall, because only a small dome shows on the roof and the tube does the rest indoors.

Where a roof unit shows cloud between its panes, the glazing seal has gone, and misted units are something we replace, alongside new fittings: see misted rooflights. Whatever the roof, the visit costs nothing and the quote that comes after it is fixed and written. When the work is done, a 10-year workmanship guarantee is put in writing. Ring 01792 929062 or book the survey online.