Rear of brick semis with a single-storey extension and lawn

Moira

Moira landings lit from above by skylights and rooflights

16.6 road miles south of Derby, once a pit village, with a canal at its edge.

Moira's houses range from old colliery-era brick to recent estates, and every one has a dim corner. Show us yours and the survey starts on that spot.

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Brick rows, narrow stairs and rooms with one window

Stairs climbing past a stone wall towards a roof window — Stairs climbing past a stone wall, dim until the roof window at the top.

Kitchen worktop beneath a beam and a roof window — A kitchen worktop beneath a beam, in shade away from the roof window.

Rooflights for Moira's roofs, old and new

For older roofs we lean towards conservation rooflights and roof windows; for windowless landings and bathrooms, sun tunnels; for rear additions, roof lanterns or flat roof rooflights; and where a unit has gone cloudy, misted rooflight replacement.

A village built up around a colliery tends to end up with two roof types sitting together. Older houses have modest pitched roofs with a short run of rafters, which suit a slim frame set low in the slope. Newer houses have larger, shallower roofs and wider rooms, where a bigger roof window, or a lantern over a kitchen extension, makes more sense. The product is chosen only after a visit to the room and a look at the roof over it, never before, and the written quote names exactly what goes in.

The full guide

A Moira landing, and the roof above it

Moira is a former mining village, and its houses went up in more than one wave. What they share is the stair. The landing at the top is often the darkest place in the house, with rafters close overhead. Here is how the dark step, the slope above it and the rules around it fit together.

Dark top step
Slope, tile and flashing
Planning and Building Control
Glass and heat

Callout 1

Finding the dark step on a Moira landing

Ask someone in an older two-storey house where it feels gloomy and they rarely say the bedroom. They say the landing. The stair climbs between two walls, nothing opens onto it except doors, and by mid-afternoon you are reaching for the switch to see the top step. That is the spot, and it is the one place a window in the wall cannot help, because there is no outside wall to put it in.

What gets marked out above a Moira stairwell

Top step position: the point the light must reach
Gap between rafters: limits how wide the opening goes
Loft floor and storage: decides the shape of the shaft
Ceiling height at the landing: sets how the light spreads
Roof covering around the opening: sets the flashing

The roof can help, because it is right there. Daylight arriving through the slope above the stairwell travels down the stair and spreads across the landing boards. Placement counts for more than size. A small unit set over the top step lights the place you stand, while a larger one set a metre too far towards the ridge lights the loft hatch and little else. So the survey begins on the landing, working out where the light should fall, and only afterwards climbs the loft ladder, to find out if the timbers allow an opening in that place.

Often it does, with a little give. Rafters are not always where a drawing would like them, and in an older roof they may sit at slightly uneven spacings. Where the timbers sit decides where the opening goes, with trimmers fitted round it, and the shaft below is lined so the plaster is insulated and finished to match the ceiling. The sides of that shaft are splayed outwards, which spreads the light into the landing rather than dropping it in a narrow stripe.

Where boxes and suitcases fill the loft above, the shaft still goes through, boxed in and lined, and you give up a small slice of floor rather than the whole loft. If a shaft would take too much room, a sun tunnel carries the daylight down a round tube instead.

The landing has no outside wall, but it does have a roof.

Callout 2

Reading an older roof before cutting it

An older roof carries its history. Tiles or slates have been patched, ridges rebedded, and a chimney stack may have been taken down and capped. None of that stops a rooflight going in, but it changes the approach. Before a quote is written, the covering around the planned opening gets a close look to see whether it is sound enough to be cut into and flashed against. If a handful of slates or tiles have gone brittle, it makes sense to swap those for matching ones within the same visit, so the new unit is bedded into good roof rather than a tired patch.

The slope you choose matters. A rear slope tends to be hidden from passers-by and is often kinder to the look of the house. The front slope can catch more sun on some plots, but it is the one a neighbour, or the council, is more likely to care about. The slope that serves the spot best is chosen first, then tested against the planning position in the next chapter.

Newer roofs in the village are a different job. A modern concrete-tiled roof on a recent house is usually a larger plain surface with a regular rafter layout, and a roof window made for that pitch fits neatly between the rafters with a ready-made flashing kit. For a single straightforward unit the work on the roof usually takes one or two days, and it suits a loft bedroom or a landing in a newer house just as well.

Whatever the roof, an opening needs sound structure around it. Cutting a rafter without carrying its load round the hole weakens the roof, so the opening is framed with timber trimmers and a header, and those are insulated so the ceiling beside the opening does not become a cold strip.

Callout 3

Who decides, and what Moira householders should check

Planning in Moira is a matter for North West Leicestershire District Council; its website at nwleics.gov.uk hosts the planning pages. On a house, permitted development often covers a rooflight, though the conditions attach to it, and the planning guide sends you to the government source for them. Neither flats nor maisonettes enjoy those rights, and a listed house needs consent before most alterations. Streets within a conservation area can lose those rights by council decision. That is its call, so before the survey we ask it about your street.

Whether your street falls inside a conservation area is for North West Leicestershire District Council to say. Conservation area status by itself leaves permitted development in place; an Article 4 direction can take it away, and a listed building needs listed building consent. Should your own house prove to be listed or in a protected area, a low-profile conservation unit earns its place. Its frame is thin and low, and the glass lies nearly level with the covering, so the roofline keeps its old character.

Planning and Building Regulations are separate matters. A cut that changes the structure of the roof is building work. Where it is notifiable, the paperwork is ours, and it goes either to the council's building control team or to a registered building control approver. A direct replacement is different again, since Part L treats it as a controlled fitting with a thermal limit of its own, 2.2 for a rooflight, and for a roof window 1.4, or a place in band B of the Window Energy Rating bands.

None of this has to be worked out by you in advance. The free survey comes first. Only after the visit does a fixed price get written, with the planning answer for your address already in hand.

Low-profile frame or ordinary roof window

Slim conservation frame

Slim frame, glazing bar
Sits flush with the slope
Suits older roofs
Often the council's preference

Ordinary opening roof window

Opens for ventilation
Wider range of sizes
Quick fit between rafters
Suits newer roofs

Callout 4

Keeping the landing warm as well as bright

Putting a hole in the roof raises a fair question about heat. A modern rooflight bears little comparison with the single-glazed units that older houses sometimes still have. Double glazing with a low-emissivity coating, warm-edge spacers and an insulated frame keeps the inner pane much closer to the temperature of the wall beside it. The shaft is lined with insulation too, so the route from loft to landing is not a cold chimney above your head.

If the landing faces south, summer sun matters. Glass with a solar control coating holds back heat without turning the daylight grey, and a blind on the rooflight handles the brightest days. A motorised opening unit can vent the stale warm air that collects at the top of the house.

Fitting a new unit where an old one sat is quicker, because the opening already exists. Clouded glass, a failing seal or a rotted frame are signs the unit has run its course. A replacement sized to the same opening, with current glazing, usually improves the landing straight away. If a unit is beyond repair, the only choice is what to fit instead, and that is the survey conversation.

The houses of a coalfield village

Moira is a former mining village in North West Leicestershire, about 2.5 miles south-west of Ashby de la Zouch, and its population is counted within the civil parish of Ashby Woulds. The name comes from the Irish earldom of Moira, one of the titles of the Hastings family, who held Ashby Castle, and the pit that worked here, Rawdon Colliery, carried a family name too. It was worked for about 150 years, and it ran out of viable coal seams after surviving the closures that followed the miners' strike in the mid-1980s.

Coal shaped how the village grew, and that tells you what to expect overhead. A village that built up round a pit has houses from the years when the pit needed workers, and more recent estates added once the pit was gone. We attach no particular date or builder to any particular street. At the survey we can see what a house is made of and how its roof is put together, and that is what decides the rooflight.

The older houses tend to be modest in scale, brick under tile or slate, with narrow stairs and small rooms. Daylight runs short on the stair, in the bathroom and in any room with a single small back window. Rooflights there are about reaching a particular place with a small, neat opening. Newer houses, with larger plans and often a converted loft, ask a different question. A bedroom in the roof wants a roof window that opens, with a clear opening big enough for escape where the height allows, and for escape and headroom there, roof windows for loft conversions goes into the detail.

Extensions at the back are common across villages like this, and many have flat roofs. Behind a house that was once dark in the middle, glazing set over the dining table, whether flat or a small lantern, turns the extension into the best-lit room in the house. The upstand is built and insulated, and the unit set so the roof drains cleanly around it.

The canal is part of the picture. A 1.5-mile section of the Ashby Canal beside the old furnace has been restored and rewatered, though the A42 now cuts across its line and stops it joining the rest of the system. For anyone living close to water or tall trees, the practical point is that shade can make a back room darker than its size suggests, and a rooflight reaches the sky that a side window cannot.

Whatever the house, the question is the same. Which spot is dark, and what is above it? Start from there and the choice of rooflight follows.

Moira householders ask

My Moira landing is dark but the stairs are steep. Can a rooflight still reach it?

Usually it can. The unit goes in the roof directly above the stairwell, and daylight drops down the stair onto the landing. The loft is checked at the survey for rafters and stored belongings, and a boxed, insulated shaft carries the light through. If the loft is too crowded, a sun tunnel is the slimmer option.

Is there a conservation area in Moira that affects my roof?

North West Leicestershire District Council is the body that can tell you whether your road falls inside a conservation area. Being inside one leaves permitted development intact on its own; an Article 4 direction removes it, and a listed house needs consent too. We put your address to the council ahead of the survey, and you hear what it says.

Do I need Building Regulations approval to put a rooflight into my roof?

If the new opening alters the roof structure, yes. Approval goes through a registered building control approver or the council itself. A like-for-like swap must still meet Part L. The notification is ours to deal with, and the written quote says so.

What can be done about a bathroom with no window?

A sun tunnel collects daylight under a little dome in the roof and passes it down a mirrored tube and out through a ceiling diffuser. It suits a bathroom with a loft above and needs far less structural work than a full rooflight. A bathroom on the top floor can take a small roof window directly.

Our kitchen extension at the back is bright at one end only. What would help?

Glazing over the table or worktop, where you actually stand, pulls daylight into the dim end, in the form of a flat rooflight or a lantern. The joists and roof covering are checked first, then the kerb is built up and lined, and the unit is sized to suit the room below.

Nearby

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