27.4 road miles north-east of Bournemouth
skylights & rooflights in totton
The station and the old centre are the starting point in Totton, and rows of semis and estate closes run out towards Calmore, Testwood and Hounsdown, most of them built in the last century. Each roof is measured, and you receive the figures on paper.
the semis and closes of Totton
- Interwar semisHipped tiled roofs, loft space over two floors.
- Post-war bungalowsSingle storey, a hallway with no daylight, shallow lofts.
- Estate houses from later decadesTrussed roofs with interlocking tiles, often on short closes.
- Extended homesRear kitchens and garage conversions with flat roofs.
what the maps say about your Totton house
- planning authority
- New Forest District Council
- conservation areas
- Eling and others: check the address
- road miles
- 27.4
roof windows and rooflights across Totton and Eling
the station and the estates
a town that grew in layers
Totton and Eling stand at the top of Southampton Water, in the New Forest District Council area. Their housing is mostly twentieth century, which makes the roofs more regular than a village's and the questions more specific.
Living beside the Forest is not the same as living in it
A common assumption about Totton roofs, set against what the maps show.
Totton sits on the eastern edge of the New Forest, and many owners reasonably take it that the Forest's rules follow them indoors. The picture is more mixed. Planning for the town runs through New Forest District Council. The parish also takes in a small area inside the National Park, and on that side of the boundary the Park Authority, not the District Council, receives applications instead.
The same applies to the older core. Totton and Eling have a long history as separate places, with Eling the quieter and older of the two, and the roofs there mix older cottages with later houses. A Victorian or earlier cottage at Eling will ask for different care from a 1960s close on the road to Calmore, and the records we read are different too.
Everything depends on where the boundary runs relative to your house, and the maps are published online. Eling has a conservation area of its own, with a character statement on the District Council's website. Either boundary is a reason to look the address up first, and our survey includes that lookup.
Myth
Everything near the Forest is covered by Forest rules
Totton's position at the edge of the National Park leads many owners to assume their roof falls under Park planning.
Fact
The authority depends on the house
Most of Totton is planned by the District Council. A small part of the parish lies inside the National Park, where the Park Authority takes the applications. A published boundary map shows which side an address falls on.
A 1930s hip and a 1980s truss
The two commonest roof families in Totton, and what each lets a rooflight do.
Totton grew from a small place at the head of Southampton Water into a town mostly through twentieth-century building. Much of that building came between the wars and after them, in streets of semis close to the old centre. Post-war and later estates then spread the town west and north towards Calmore and Testwood, with newer infill filling the gaps in the decades since.
An interwar semi usually has a hipped roof built from timbers cut on site, with a loft deep enough to stand in at the ridge. The rafters are on fairly even centres, and a roof window sized to fit between them is a short job. Estates from later decades are built with factory trusses, where each triangular frame carries the roof as a unit and is never cut on a whim. A truss roof leaves a rooflight two choices: a narrow window that fits the gap, or a wider one with a design from a structural engineer.
Hips need a note. Where the roof is hipped, the sloping corners cut the area available on the end slopes, so the main front or rear slope usually does the work. Gabled roofs on later houses give two clean planes, and a window can often be centred above the stairs. Both kinds of roof take a roof window well, and either can be lit with a tunnel, though each gets there by a different route.
1930s hipped roof
- Rafters cut on site, on even centres
- A loft with usable headroom under the ridge
- Hips on three or four sides give a choice of slope
- Room to turn the loft into a bedroom or study
Later trussed roof
- Factory-made frames, never cut without a design
- A web of diagonal timbers in the loft
- Narrow window sizes sit between the trusses
- Wider openings need an engineer's drawing first
Three numbers for a Totton loft conversion
Energy, escape and notification: the figures that matter when a Totton loft becomes a room.
A roof window over a stairwell has a second benefit in a house of this age. The shaft can be kept open to the stairs, so daylight reaches the hall below, and a model that opens lets warm air rise out through the top of the house in summer. Ventilation helps rather than cures, and the window is not a substitute for extractor fans in a bathroom.
Light on a stair is something owners rarely think about until the work is under way. Totton's semis often have a stairwell lit only by a small landing window or by nothing at all, and a window in the roof directly above it changes the whole house.
Many Totton owners come to us because a loft is about to become a bedroom. Cutting into the rafters of a pitched roof is a structural change, so Building Regulations approval comes with it, and the glazing has to meet the energy limits for a new fitting. The energy limits are the figures we quote most often.
Escape is the one that surprises people. Approved Document B allows a roof window to serve as an escape window only where that storey's floor sits at most 4.5 m up from ground level. In a 1930s semi, a loft room above two full floors needs a protected stair to be signed off, whereas the rooms in the roof of a bungalow can use a window of the right size. Our Building Regulations guide covers the full set.
In a semi with a dark staircase and landing, a VELUX roof window in the rear slope throws light down the stairwell and brightens every room that opens off it.
- Part L target for a new rooflight
- 2.2 W/m²K
- target for a roof window, or Band B on the Window Energy Rating scale
- 1.4 W/m²K
- highest storey a roof window can serve as escape
- 4.5 m
From the first call to the written sheet
How a Totton survey runs when the house is a semi on a close with a drive and a rear garden.
A survey in Totton often starts at the front door and ends at the back garden fence. Walking the outside first shows the roof from several angles, how the extensions were added, and where a gutter, a flue or a satellite dish already competes for space on the slope. A window position that looks tidy on a drawing can run into a chimney stack or a soil vent, and it is better to find that out at the start.
Most Totton roofs are reached easily, so the survey is rarely held up by access. A drive or a front garden gives somewhere to stage a tower, and rear gardens are usually big enough for a ladder on the garden side. The exceptions are terraced houses near the old centre and Eling, where the back is reached through the house or down a narrow path. In those cases we agree in advance how the glass will get through, and whether the tower will sit on the pavement, which calls for a licence.
The survey is the same wherever the house stands, and it is where the quote starts. Every step produces a reading, and the readings go onto the sheet you keep. None of them needs you to be up in the loft, though you are welcome to come and look.
Bungalows get slightly different treatment. A single-storey house is lit well at its outer walls and poorly in the middle, so the hall, the inner bathroom and sometimes the kitchen end up under electric light all winter. Because the loft sits directly above, daylight can reach them from the roof, either through a boarded shaft from a window or through a tube.
Planning and notification follow. Where the Building Regulations apply, the job goes to the council's building control team or to a registered building control approver, and the certificate stays with the house. The planning guide holds the permitted development rules in full.
A Totton survey in order
- Loft firstWe measure the height at the ridge, the spacing of the rafters or trusses, and the position of the hip, purlin or wall plate.
- Then the roof itselfPitch is read on the slope, the tile type is noted, and the flashing position is marked for each candidate window.
- The address recordsWe read the conservation and planning information for the address, and note the boundary of the National Park if it is close.
- The sheet goes to youEvery reading is written down and handed over, so you can show the same figures to any other firm you ask.
Roof words you will meet in a Totton quote
The terms that come up on semis, estates and bungalows.
Totton roofs have a small vocabulary, and it turns up on every quote, and a few of the words help before anyone sends you a drawing. The semis along the older roads are hipped, the closes built later are gabled, and the extended homes behind them have flat roofs that need a rooflight of a different kind. Garage conversions are one example, and a flat-roofed kitchen extension is another: the old garage roof is usually flat or low-pitched, and the converted room beneath it is often the darkest in the house.
On a flat roof the upstand, or kerb, is the thing that holds a flat roof rooflight clear of water, and the fall of the roof matters as much as the glass. For a bungalow hallway, a sun tunnel links a dome on the roof to a diffuser in the ceiling by way of a reflective tube, and the length and the bends in the tube govern how much light arrives.
Nearby, our Ashurst and Rownhams pages cover the villages either side of Totton, both of which have housing and planning conditions of their own.
Totton roof terms, explained
- Hip
- The sloping edge that joins two roof planes at an outer corner, found on hipped roofs.
- Gable
- The triangular end wall of a roof that slopes on two sides only.
- Truss
- A triangular timber frame built in a factory, set at intervals along the house to carry the roof.
- Valley
- The internal angle where two roof slopes meet, which carries water to the gutter.
- Diffuser
- The frosted disc in the ceiling at the bottom of a sun tunnel that spreads the light.
faq
what Totton owners ask before we visit
Is Totton inside the New Forest National Park?
New Forest District Council plans most of the town, but a small part of the parish lies inside the Park. The Park's boundary map shows which side your address falls on, and the survey covers that lookup.
Can I fit a roof window in my trussed estate house?
A narrow window can sit between two trusses. A wider opening means cutting one, which needs a structural design before anyone starts.
My 1930s semi's loft is two floors up. Can a roof window be the escape route?
No. Not on a house of two full storeys. The 4.5 m limit rules a roof window out as escape there, and the loft is signed off with a protected stair.
Does Eling have special rules for rooflights?
Eling has a conservation area, and the District Council publishes a character statement for it. Conservation status by itself leaves the usual rights alone, so our check looks for a direction or condition that would change them.