Skylight Installation & Roof Upgrade in Belgrave

The Project

This Belgrave home sits among the trees in the Dandenong Ranges, and the owners had been living with a roof that no longer matched the spot it sat in. The original metal roof had aged out and the polycarbonate panels that had been used to bring natural light into the central living area had stained, gone cloudy, and started to leak. The brief was straightforward — bring the roof up to a proper standard and put real skylights where the old polycarbonate used to be.

The Problems

The existing roof had a few different things going on, and they had all been getting worse for a while:

• Stained, faded polycarbonate panels down the centre of the roof that had gone cloudy with UV exposure and were no longer keeping the rain out reliably
• Heavy weathering and surface rust across the old corrugated sheets, with white salt deposits and obvious water tracking in the worst-affected sections
• Heat and glare in the rooms below during summer — polycarbonate sheeting acts more like a greenhouse than a skylight, so the rooms underneath got uncomfortably hot whenever the sun was on the roof
• Leak risk around the old penetrations — the original whirlybird stub and vents were sitting on flashings that had reached the end of their working life

You can see the damage clearly in the before shot. The dark stained track running down the roof is where the old polycarbonate had been failing — water had been making its way under the surrounding flashings and discolouring the metal underneath.

What We Did

We replaced the failing central section of the roof with new Colorbond standing seam panels, tying them into the existing roof at the ridge and edges. The flat-pan sheets give a clean, modern look that suits the home and the surrounding bush setting, and they handle the low-pitch section of the roof without any of the ribbing issues that had been holding water on the old corrugated sheets.

Where the polycarbonate used to be, we cut openings for two large purpose-made skylights and a second pair further down the roof. Each opening was set out so the new Colorbond panels could carry water cleanly past the skylight, with custom flashing kits formed to suit the standing seam profile rather than relying on sealant.

The mid-job shot above shows one of the openings ready for a skylight to drop in. The opening is cut clean through to the rafters, the surrounding panels are already laid out with the right falls, and the flashing pieces are pre-formed before the skylight goes in — which is the difference between a watertight install and one that gets back-traced for leaks a few years later.

While we had the central section open we also replaced the tired old vent and tidied up the surrounding penetrations so everything sits flush with the new roof rather than poking through old, cracked flashings.

The Result

The change is hard to overstate. The cloudy, leaking polycarbonate is gone, and in its place are proper double-glazed skylights that bring direct natural light into the living spaces below without the heat that used to come with it. The Colorbond standing seam panels give the central section a clean, modern look that lifts the whole home, and the surrounding corrugated roof now has a sharp visual line to break it up rather than a discoloured stripe down the middle.

Looking down the rest of the roof you can see how the skylights sit flush in the new panels, properly flashed, with no exposed sealant doing work that the flashing should be doing. The whirlybird and remaining vents are tied into the new roof cleanly, and the whole central run will now move water properly during the heavy weather that the Dandenongs are known for.

For the owners, the practical difference is the one that matters most — more usable natural light in the rooms below, no more chasing leaks every winter, and a roof that should not need touching again for a very long time.