The roof, the roof, the roof is on…

Just on – here’s how it happened.

The space for the Velux was made – to have roof windows or not was another one of those ridiculously drawn out and complicated decisions – for the following reasons:

  • I was worried a roof window would quickly get covered in guano  – this was justifiable as it turned out!
  • I was already pretty close to the limit on the glazing to floor space ratio for building regs.
  • I was worried that a roof window in this westerly facing roof would cause the setting sun to hit you in the eyes.  On further investigation, because the roof is north westerly, the sun doesn’t really get round that far for most of the year and then it’s behind the Ballamodha hill when it’s low anyway.  Suncalc.net is useful if you want to see the trajectory of the sun at different times of day and year.

I did a lot of research into sun tunnels / solatubes thinking they would overcome these three issues but after ringing the top three manufacturers to see what the minimum roof depth the sun tunnels could be set into (they are really designed for ceilings with a loft space above) and also asking about their U-Values, I gave up on the idea.

In the end, I went for a single roof window over the kitchen area to balance the light from the big glazed South facing wall at the back.  I knew it was the right decision when I saw this 🙂

Velux hole

 

Fascia boards up.

Fascia boards on

 

The roofers started, day one they got the membrane on, batoned it, put the velux in and half the tiles.

Half roof on

 

Day two they finished putting the tiles on and also had a little wild goose chase trying to find more reclaimed tile and halves for the edges (I’d not considered the velux).

Roof on

 

Here’s the whole roof.  I’m delighted with the way the reclaimed tiles look!

The third day they finished the leadwork, cemented the edging and cleaned my gutters 🙂

Roof cement edging

Inside roof

 

The weird thing is, it now feels huge inside, bigger than it did when it was open to the elements.

Roof from river

 

My only complaint is that after all that saga with the tiles – you can’t actually see them from my garden.  You can just see the roof a little bit from the river.

 

Roof from other side of road

 

And a bit if you stand on the other side of the road – this got me an enquiry from a passerby “it’s ok, I’m just admiring my new roof”.

As for the tiles – well, there are still a few left!  This photos doesn’t look too bad as they garden has been fighting back but underneath that greenery is more tiles.  I’m a bit stumped about what to do with them, perhaps I should make friends with the local taekjando club – hiyah!

Left over tiles