Blaenau Gwent, 23 road miles out of Newport towards the north-west
Skylight and rooflight fitting in Tredegar
- 10-year workmanship guarantee
- We handle the Building Control notification where notifiable
An iron town beside the Sirhowy
Tredegar is a town and community on the banks of the Sirhowy River, in the county borough of Blaenau Gwent in South East Wales. The fast-flowing water of the Sirhowy could be used for scouring, which separated the topsoil from the iron ore beneath. The local historian Oliver Jones writes that by c.1803 a new town had been created after Furnace No 3 of the local iron works was completed. Before that, Tredegar had contained only three houses. Jones also documents that from the mid-1780s coal mining became more systematic and much better organised.
What is over a given room today depends on when the house went up. Victorian terraces are often roofed in slate, interwar and postwar houses lean towards concrete tile, while a later kitchen or garage conversion can carry a flat roof of its own. We read the roof in front of us and the room underneath, then suggest the product that fits both.
| The home | Roof overhead | A product to weigh up |
|---|---|---|
| Victorian or Edwardian terrace | Slate pitch with a small outshut behind | A roof window set into the slope behind |
| Interwar or postwar semi | Concrete tile pitch over a loft | A roof window for the bedroom and a sun tunnel for the landing |
| Bungalow with a gloomy middle room | Shallow pitch over a modest roof void | A sun tunnel, if the void gives a run from roof to ceiling |
| Garage or kitchen turned into living space | Flat roof | A flat rooflight, opening or fixed |
Roof windows, tubes and a way to open the glass
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Blaenau Gwent and the Welsh rules
Decisions on planning in Tredegar sit with Blaenau Gwent County Borough Council. Welsh permitted development lets a house take a rooflight inside certain limits, and the chapter on Wales in our planning guide explains what they are.
A house inside a conservation area is in a different position: a new rooflight there is not permitted development, so a planning application is needed. Conservation areas for Tredegar that the council and the Welsh Government's boundary map list include Bedwellty Park, and the map also shows one called Tredegar Heritage Initiative. Where a boundary runs relative to your front door is a question for the council, and its conservation pages carry the boundaries.
Flats sit outside householder permitted development altogether. For a house, a council's Article 4 direction can take those rights away, as can a condition attached to the first planning permission, so the history of the property is worth knowing. If your house is listed, listed building consent is needed for work that would affect its character; the application goes through the local planning authority, which for Tredegar is Blaenau Gwent. Cadw recommends what is listed, and the Welsh Ministers compile the list.
Steam on the bathroom slope
Roof windows over the bath, and what the morning does to the glass.
Showers make steam in a rush. In a bathroom under a sloping ceiling, that steam meets the roof window, and the glass can fog or run with water before the extractor has caught up. It is worth choosing the window with that in mind.
Replacing a window brings Approved Document F (Wales) into play, and the home's ventilation should end up no worse than it was. Trickle vents on the old window mean vents no smaller on the new one, adjustable by the occupant or automatically. With none on the old window, in a house that depends on natural ventilation, fitting at least 4,000 mm² of equivalent vent area in a bathroom is one route to showing it is no worse. A survey is where we check what the room has now before settling the sash.
A window that opens helps in a bathroom, because it gives steam a route out. Reach decides how easily that happens. Over a bath, a handle high on a sloping ceiling is awkward, and an electric roof window is one way round it. By VELUX's account, its powered roof windows, the solar and electric ones, carry a rain sensor that shuts them when rain starts.
Glazing choices come into it too. On the VELUX options list sit a dirt-repellent coating that makes cleaning simpler and a laminated inner pane meant to stop glass dropping into the room if it breaks by accident; which of these you can have varies with the window and the glazing variant.
Privacy deserves a minute as well. Where houses stand at different heights, a roof window can be overlooked from one higher up. A blind settles it, and the survey is the moment to stand where the window will go and see what looks back.
A new roof window is building work in the Building Regulations sense, since roof windows are named among the controlled fittings alongside windows and rooflights. Where the work is notifiable, we handle the Building Regulations notification with local authority building control or a registered building control approver.
Bathroom roof window
- Air
- Vents no worse than the old window's, controllable by the occupant or automatically
- Reach
- An electric model if the sash is high over the bath
- Rain sensor
- VELUX solar and electric roof windows only
- Privacy
- A blind chosen once the sightlines are seen
- Paperwork
- Building Regulations notification handled where notifiable
Glass you cannot reach
Electric opening rooflights over stairwells and extensions.
Some roof glass sits where no hand can get at it: above a stairwell, over the middle of a wide extension, or beyond a worktop. A fixed rooflight there lights the space, and does nothing about the warm air collecting at the top.
An electric opening rooflight addresses that by moving the sash without anyone reaching for it. It suits a room that fills with cooking heat or sun, because the opening part is the way air leaves, and it saves climbing onto a chair or a stepladder to reach a sash set high above a worktop or a staircase. Approved Document F (Wales) lists purge ventilation, a fast way to air a room, among the needs of every habitable room, and an opening window can supply it. Our page on skylights that open sets out the choices.
VELUX's rain sensor belongs to the maker's solar and electric windows, so another maker's rooflight is checked on its own merits before we suggest it.
An opening panel gives you the dark hours as well. When the sash is shut and the lights are on below, the glass above reads as a black mirror. Shut and unlit, it is a dark square. Open on a mild evening, it is a gap to the sky, and that is the use some households want from it.
Where the glass is hard to reach, cleaning is a fair concern. Pilkington Activ is a self-cleaning glass, and Pilkington names roof glazing among its uses: the coating relies on daylight to loosen dirt and on rain to wash it off.
Whether glass has to be energy efficient is covered by Approved Document L (Wales). For a new or replacement rooflight in an existing home, the guidance is a U-value no worse than 2.2 W/m²K; a roof window should be no worse than 1.4 W/m²K or Window Energy Rating band B. A rooflight is the glazed unit on a kerb or upstand, and a roof window is the one in the plane of the roof.
A fixed written quote comes after the free survey, and the choice between opening and fixed glass is made before it, not afterwards.
| If the glass is | Then |
|---|---|
| Within arm's reach | A manual sash is fine |
| Above a stair or a worktop | An electric opening model is worth pricing |
| Over a dark landing with no wall | Look at a sun tunnel instead |
A hallway with no window
What a sun tunnel does, and the hour it stops.
Walk through the middle of a bungalow or a terrace with the doors shut and you may find a passage that has never had daylight. A sun tunnel is built for exactly that. It starts as a dome out on the roof, carries daylight down a tube across the loft and ends at a diffuser set in the ceiling, so the space gets daylight from a roof it cannot see.
It works while there is daylight outside. After dark the diffuser in the ceiling is a pale disc, and the hall light does the work again. Nothing in the tube gives out light of its own.
The run is what matters. The tube needs a route that links roof and ceiling, passing the timbers and whatever is stored in the loft. On a bungalow with a shallow pitch the void can be small, and whether a tube fits is decided by looking. The page on rigid versus flexible tubes covers the two kinds.
At the roof end, the choice of flashing depends on the covering, whether slate or concrete tile, and the dome sits where it has the most open sky. Inside, the diffuser goes where it helps the stairs and doorways, which may not be the centre of the ceiling.
For sleeping rooms the answer is different. A tube above a bed may not be shut against a bright morning in the way a blind shuts a roof window, so bedrooms are better with roof windows. A hallway, a landing or a small cloakroom is the sort of place where early light is welcome, and where nobody is trying to sleep through it. If you are unsure which category a room falls into, say so at the survey and we will go through it with you on the spot.
Tredegar, in questions
Is Tredegar close enough for you to survey?
I live near Bedwellty Park: does that change what I can do?
It might. A conservation area named Bedwellty Park is among those listed for Tredegar, and a house inside a conservation area cannot add a rooflight as permitted development, so a planning application is needed. The test is whether the house itself falls within the line, and Blaenau Gwent can tell you. Our guide to the Welsh rules has the detail.
What does listed building consent involve?
It is needed when work would affect a listed building's character, and it covers features inside and out. The application goes to Blaenau Gwent County Borough Council, which is the planning authority for Tredegar. Cadw recommends which buildings are listed, and the Welsh Ministers compile the list.
Can a roof window be opened without reaching for a handle?
Electric and solar models exist. Whether a given model has a rain sensor depends on the maker; VELUX describes one for the solar and electric part of its range, so we check the particular model before recommending it.
Which room is a sun tunnel wrong for?
A bedroom. A sun tunnel carries daylight only, and it may have no way to shut out a bright morning, so sleeping rooms do better under a roof window that has a blackout blind fitted.
Where do I send the details for a Tredegar visit?
Use the quote form, or send a WhatsApp message to 07880 284133 with your street and the room, or write to info@supremeskylightsnewport.co.uk.
Book your free survey
10-year workmanship guarantee.
Building Control notification handled where notifiable.