Roof Lanterns & Skylights · Weston-super-Mare & North Somerset
Roof Lanterns & Skylights In Weston-super-Mare
Is the back of your house darker than it ought to be?
Lanterns and rooflights installed by the people who have to weather them in
A flat roof is the easiest roof in the world to put glass into, which is why so many kitchen extensions around Weston have a lantern sitting in the middle of one. Done properly it transforms a room that used to be a corridor with a fridge in it. Done badly it becomes the thing you ring a roofer about every autumn. The difference is almost never the lantern itself - modern units are well made and the manufacturers know what they are doing - it is the kerb it sits on and how the covering is dressed up and over it. That is a roofing detail, not a glazing one, which is a large part of why we would rather fit these ourselves than come along afterwards and try to rescue somebody else's. We supply and install, or we fit a unit you have already bought, and either way the weathering is ours.
Free Roof Lanterns & Skylights Quote
Four boxes and one of us will come and stand on it. Surveys are free, we do not do the three-hour kitchen-table sales pitch, and if your roof has another eight years in it we would rather tell you that than sell you one you do not need.
1,000+
Flat roofs laid, patched or rescued
Houses & Units
Domestic and commercial, same crew
Written Down
Guarantee on paper before we start
Nothing
What it costs to get us on your roof
Why Use Us For Roof Lanterns & Skylights In Weston-super-Mare?
The kerb is built properly
An upstand of the right height, square, level and structurally sound, with the covering carried right up and over it. This is where these installations live or die and it is entirely a roofing job.
Height that suits our weather
A skimpy kerb is asking for trouble on a coast where rain arrives horizontally. We build them tall enough that wind-driven water has nowhere to get to, which costs almost nothing extra at the time.
Fitted while the roof is open
By far the cheapest moment to add glass is during a re-cover, when the deck is already exposed. Doing it as a separate job later means cutting into a perfectly good covering and paying for the privilege.
The structure gets checked
Cutting a hole in a roof means the joists around it need trimming and supporting properly. That is not optional and it is not something to eyeball, particularly on the older stock around Milton and Worle.
Condensation thought about
Glass is the coldest thing in the roof, so it is where moisture appears first. Getting the insulation line and the vapour control layer to meet the kerb correctly is what stops a lantern that appears to leak in January only.
Your unit or ours
We have suppliers we rate and can price the lot. If you have already ordered something, or inherited one with the house, we are perfectly happy to install it and weather it in.
"Practically every leaking rooflight we get called to is leaking at the kerb rather than the glass. The unit is usually blameless and occasionally still under a warranty nobody has thought to check."
Based on the roof lanterns & skylights jobs handled by RPS Flat Roofing
How A Roof Lanterns & Skylights Job Runs
Tell Us What It Is Doing
Where the mark is, when it started, and whether it gets worse in wind or only in long rain. Those two behave differently and it narrows things down before anybody fetches a ladder.
Somebody Stands On It
One of us comes out, gets up there, and walks the whole roof rather than the corner you pointed at. Free, and with no expectation it turns into work.
A Look Underneath As Well
Where there is a ceiling void or a loft hatch, we look at the deck from below too. Half of what matters on a flat roof is invisible from the top.
The Diagnosis, Then The Price
You get told what has failed and why, in words you could repeat to somebody else, before any number is mentioned. Photos where they make it clearer.
A Quote You Can Take Apart
Deck, insulation, membrane, trims and access all listed separately. If you only want part of it done, you can see exactly what that part costs.
Strip Back To Sound Timber
The old covering comes off and the deck gets checked properly. Anything soft comes out. Laying a new membrane over damp boards is how a ten year roof becomes a three year roof.
Falls Before Finish
If the water has nowhere to go, it is going to sit there whatever we cover it with. Firrings or tapered insulation put a proper slope back before the membrane goes anywhere near it.
Water On It Before We Leave
Outlets tested, edges and upstands checked, everything swept up, photographs sent over and the written guarantee handed to you on the day.
What Our Guarantee Actually Covers
Every flat roof in Weston is guaranteed by somebody. Read the small print and you usually find the promise is from the company that made the rubber, not the company that stuck it down. That distinction matters, because membranes almost never fail. Installations do. A sheet of EPDM will happily outlive all of us sitting in a warehouse. It fails at the upstand where somebody rushed the corner.
So RPS Flat Roofing splits the two and tells you both. The materials carry whatever the manufacturer offers, which depends on the product going on your roof - and you are told which product that is, by name, before you agree to anything. Separately, the workmanship carries our own written guarantee, handed over on the day, in language you could read out to a neighbour.
The reason we are relaxed about putting that in writing is that most of the flat roof failures we get called to were decided before the covering went on. Water was never given anywhere to go, or the old deck was left in place because lifting it would have shown up something awkward. Get the falls and the deck right and the covering is the easy part. Get them wrong and no warranty document in the world keeps your ceiling dry.
In Writing
Our Workmanship
Named Product
Maker's Own Cover
Covered
Public Liability
1,000+
Flat Roofs Done
What To Look For In A Roof Lanterns & Skylights Firm
Ask who is doing the weathering
Some firms fit the unit and leave the roofing to somebody else, which creates exactly the gap in responsibility you do not want. When it leaks a year later, the glazing company says the roof and the roofer says the unit, and you are standing in the middle with a bucket. Get one firm holding the whole detail.
Ask how tall the kerb will be
This is the single detail that decides whether a rooflight survives a Weston winter. Low kerbs look sleeker and cost less in timber, and they are also how wind-driven rain gets in. If somebody cannot tell you the height they intend to build to, they have not designed it yet.
Ask about the joists
You are removing part of a structure that is holding a roof up. Trimmers, proper support, sometimes a doubled joist. On a wide opening it can need calculating rather than judging. A firm that treats cutting a metre-square hole in your roof as a trim job has not thought hard enough about it.
Lantern Against Flat Rooflight
| Comparison point | Roof Lanterns & Skylights | Flat Rooflight |
|---|---|---|
| The look | Raised, pitched, a feature in the room | Flush and minimal, barely there |
| How it sheds water | Pitched glass, runs off by itself | Relies on a slight built-in fall |
| Light delivered | Excellent, and from several angles | Excellent, straight down |
| Ceiling height needed | Reads best in a taller room | Fine in a standard ceiling height |
| Typical spend | £1,200 to £3,500 fitted | £900 to £2,800 fitted |
| Watch out for | Bar junctions and the kerb | Standing water if the fall is wrong |
Nine Times Out Of Ten It Is Not The Glass
Somebody rings about a leaking lantern and has usually already decided the unit is faulty. It rarely is. What tends to have happened is that the covering was dressed up the kerb but not properly over and under the frame, so water driven sideways in a gale gets behind it - which is a five minute detail to get right during installation and a genuinely awkward one to fix afterwards. The other regular culprit is not a leak at all. Glass is the coldest surface in any roof, so on a cold winter morning the moisture in a kitchen full of cooking, kettles and people condenses on the inside of it and runs down onto the plaster below. That looks exactly like a leak, arrives on cold mornings rather than wet ones, and no amount of sealant will ever touch it, because the water is coming from inside your house. Sorting that is about ventilation, and about whether the insulation line meets the kerb properly - which brings you back to the warm roof build-up and how the whole roof was put together in the first place.
See what a flat roof costs in WestonWhat Roof Lanterns & Skylights Costs In Weston-super-Mare
Supplied and installed, a flat rooflight in a typical extension is generally £900 to £2,800 depending on size and specification, and a lantern £1,200 to £3,500. Those figures include forming the opening, trimming the structure, building the kerb and weathering it all in. Fitting a unit you have already bought is naturally less. The big saving is timing: adding glass during a re-cover costs a fraction of what it costs as a standalone job later, because the expensive part is opening the roof up and that has already happened.
See The Full Cost GuideRoof Lanterns & Skylights - Your Questions
Do I need planning permission for a rooflight?
Usually not on a standard house - most rooflights sit comfortably inside permitted development as long as they do not project much above the roof plane. It changes if you are in a conservation area, and Weston has a significant one: the Great Weston conservation area, designated in 2018, took in the old Birnbeck, Melrose and Grove Park, Boulevard and Montpelier, Beach Lawns and Ellenborough Crescent areas along with the town centre. If your property is in it, check with North Somerset Council first.
Why does mine drip on cold mornings but never when it rains?
Because that is condensation, not a leak. The glass is the coldest surface in the room, warm damp air from cooking and washing hits it, and turns straight back into water. The pattern gives it away completely - clear cold mornings rather than wet days. Extra sealant will do nothing at all. Better ventilation, and checking how the insulation meets the kerb, is where the answer is.
Can you put one into my existing flat roof?
Yes. We form the opening, trim and support the structure, build the kerb, fit the unit and dress the covering into it. It is more involved than doing it during a re-cover because we are cutting into a sound roof, so if your covering is within a few years of needing replacing anyway, it is worth talking about doing both together.
How much light will it actually give?
More than people expect, because overhead glazing is dramatically more effective than a window of the same area. A single decent lantern will usually transform a galley kitchen or a dark rear extension. The bigger risk in a south-facing Weston extension is heat gain in summer rather than not enough light, so it is worth discussing solar control glass.
Will it make the room cold in winter?
Not with a modern unit. Double or triple glazed rooflights with thermally broken frames perform perfectly respectably. What does make a room cold is a good lantern sitting in a badly insulated cold-deck roof, at which point the glass gets blamed for the roof's shortcomings. If the rest of the roof is not insulated, the glass is not your problem.
Can you replace an old dome rooflight?
Yes, and it is one of the most satisfying upgrades on the older stock around here. Those yellowed plastic domes from the seventies and eighties leak, crack and let almost no usable light through by this stage. A modern unit on a properly rebuilt kerb is a different world, and normally the existing opening can be reused with a bit of adjustment.
While you are here: GRP Fibreglass Roofing ·Warm Roof Upgrades
Where We Work
Roof Lanterns & Skylights across Weston-super-Mare and out through North Somerset - Worle and Milton, the village cores at Uphill, Hutton and Bleadon, the new streets at Locking Parklands, and down onto the levels towards Highbridge and Burnham.
What People Say Afterwards
Flat roofing is a trade people only think about when something has gone wrong, so the bar is low and the horror stories are plentiful. Here is what customers around Weston and the levels have said about getting it done properly.
Two firms had already patched the same corner of our extension roof and both times it came back by Christmas. Ricky got up there, came down, and said the problem was that the water had nowhere to go - the whole thing sat in a dip. They rebuilt the falls and put rubber over it. Third winter now, still dry, and I have stopped keeping a bucket in the airing cupboard.
Ours is a bungalow near the old village so it is nearly all flat roof, and the salt off the Channel had eaten the edge trims to nothing. Quoted properly, itemised, and the price at the end was the price on the paper. They also spotted that the outlet had been fitted higher than the deck by whoever did it in the eighties, which explained a great deal.
New-ish house, flat canopy section over the front, leaking at one corner. I was braced for being told the whole lot needed replacing. James looked at it and said it was a single lap that had never been properly welded, charged me a fraction of what I had budgeted, and was gone by lunchtime. Genuinely refreshing.
We wanted the garage roof done and were dreading the whole business. Charlie turned up when he said he would, explained the difference between the warm and cold deck options without making us feel thick, and let us take a week to think about it with no chasing phone calls. The crew swept up so thoroughly you could not tell they had been.
We run a unit and the roof had been leaking over the racking for the best part of a year. They worked around us, did the noisy part on a Saturday so we never lost a day's trading, and the report they sent afterwards was detailed enough that our insurer accepted it without a single follow-up question. Cannot ask for much more than that.
I had put off dealing with the dormer for years because every quote I got was for the entire roof. RPS were the only ones who separated out what actually needed doing from what would be nice to do eventually. They did the dormer, told me the main covering had a good few years left, and did not once try to talk me into the bigger job.
Get A Price For Roof Lanterns & Skylights
Ring and describe what it is doing, or send a message and one of us will come and stand on it. Surveys are free, the number we write down is the number you pay, and if the honest answer is that your roof has another five winters in it, that is what you will be told.