Dormer - cost - piece of string calculation

How are you going to put slates or tiles & leadwork onto your new roof structure from the inside?

NT

Pretty impossible to make a good job of altering the tiling or slates etc from inside after fitting a dormer. Looking at some round here, it's difficult enough with a Velux.

Put up the frame, tile and lead all round, then fit the panels and windows?

Roof on last, perhaps? Would have to be fibreglass, I suppose, unless you had a very athletic roofer.

There might be a way to design a kit for fitting from the inside, but no doubt working from the outside would be easier.

It was prompted by the ability to fit a roof light from the inside.

Cheers

Dave R

When I converted a loft about 15 years ago, I estimated the additional cost of building a front dormer instead of just roof windows would be something like £2 - £2.5K extra. (and at the time would have needed planning permission). If you are starting from scratch however then I would expect it to cost considerably more, although you ought to be able to DIY for under £10K I would have thought.

Depends on how much roof you are replacing with (a) dormer(s) - but generally purlin's can be removed if the roof they are supporting is no longer there, or you can find a way of replacing their function - say with a dwarf wall.

If you look at:

The front roof pitch was staying in place, but the purlin needed to go, so it was replaced with a wall.

The rear dormer basically replaced that entire side of the roof, so once its roof was built, I just took a chainsaw to the roof on that side including its purlin!

No, not sensibly.

I think you will find gravity works much the same at that latitude ;-)

Thanks for the fascinating link.

Fascinating because that looks like a '30s 3 bedroom semi very similar to ours in the roof structure. [Apologies if it is 4 or more bedrooms.]

Straightening the roof gives a lot more space.

Making me wonder idly if it would be worth it to make the roof suitable for solar panels; not having a lot of roof makes the number of panels you can mount uneconomic (or it was many years back when we last looked).

However that was then (with a massive FIT payment) and now it is unlikely to cost in.

We don't need any extra space, either.

Cheers

Dave R

ok, then you'd just be working on the outside without scaffold. If diying you don't have to have scaff AIUI, it's just safer.

NT

Yup it was a 3 bed when I started, and 5 when I was done ;-)

Indeed.

Probably not.

You can buy a GRP dormer, which is put in place using a crane in NL. The total job takes less than a day.

Any cost information?

Cheers

Dave R