Roof checks to do before winter, from the ground
Binoculars, a phone camera and twenty minutes in the garden will find nearly everything worth finding. No ladder, and nobody on the roof.
You can do a genuinely useful pre-winter roof check without leaving the lawn. A pair of binoculars, a phone camera and a torch for the loft will find the dipped ridge, the slipped tile, the cracked mortar fillet and the debris in the flowerbed. The one thing most people miss is the simplest: photograph the roof while it is still sound, and keep the photographs dated.
The short version
- Sight along the ridge first. It should be dead straight, and a sag in it is the only item here that points at the timber rather than the covering.
- The flowerbed under the eaves keeps a record. Tile fragments, mortar crumbs and grit mean the roof is shedding material.
- Photograph every elevation now, while nothing has happened. Dated photographs of a sound roof are the strongest evidence you can hold if you ever claim.
- Low to moderate moss on a roof that is not leaking, with clear gutters, is usually best left alone.
Ground rules
Why the whole list stays on the ground
The list stays on the ground because roof work kills people who do it for a living: the HSE reports that almost one in five deaths in construction work involve roof work.
Before you fetch the ladder. The HSE position is that you should not consider going on any roof in poor weather conditions such as rain, ice, frost or strong winds, particularly gusting winds, or if the roof is slippery. The same page notes that winds in excess of 23mph will affect a person’s balance. That is a fresh breeze on a bright autumn day, not a gale.
| Action | Safe? | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Looking and photographing from the garden, a neighbour’s garden with permission, or an upstairs window | Yes | No work at height |
| Looking in the loft with a torch | Yes, with care | The hazard is the ceiling, not the height |
| Clearing a ground gully or the foot of a downpipe | Yes | Ground level |
| Ladder to a gutter | Only dry, still and secured | Short work, competent person |
| Ladder in wind, rain, ice or frost | No | HSE: not in poor weather |
| Walking on a pitched roof, garage or outbuilding | No | Treat every roof as fragile |
The checklist
Working from the ridge down, without leaving the garden
Give it twenty minutes on a dry, still, bright morning, with binoculars and your phone, standing as far back from the house as you can get.
The ridge line, sighted along
Stand at one end and sight along the ridge the way you would sight along a plank. It should be dead straight. A dip or a kink is the most important thing on this page, because it is the only item that points at the structure: a spread rafter, a deflected purlin, a failed wall plate. That wants looking at, not watching for another winter. Check the bedding along the ridge too, and any ridge tile sitting proud or turned out of line.
Slipped, slid and missing tiles
Run the binoculars along each slope in bands, the way you read a page. You want a gap where a tile has gone, a tile sitting lower than its course, and a tile lifted at one corner. On slate, a slip shows as a darker rectangle, because you are seeing the felt behind it. Look hardest at the edges: tiles go at the verge, the eaves and around the chimney, where wind pressure concentrates, and the mechanism is in what wind does to a roof.
Mortar fillets at abutments and stacks
Wherever the roof meets a wall there is a joint, and on older houses it is often a cement fillet rather than lead. Cement and roof coverings move at different rates, so fillets crack and a section drops out. Look for a dark line along the joint, a piece missing, or mortar crumbs on the tiles below, then look at the wall underneath. A stain on the brickwork, or a tide mark on the ceiling below, means it has been letting water past.
The chimney: lean, flaunching and vegetation
Sight up the side of the stack against a downpipe or the corner of the house. Stacks lean because mortar on the weather side erodes faster than the sheltered side. Then the flaunching, the mortar cap the pots sit in: crazed, lifted or open flaunching puts water into the top of the stack, and it comes out lower down as a damp bedroom wall. Buddleia in a joint is proof that joint holds water. Repointing a stack is brickwork rather than roofing.
A visibly leaning stack is not a repair job, it is a phone call. Section 78 of the Building Act 1984 gives the local authority power to take immediate steps to remove the danger where a building is dangerous and immediate action is needed. Ringing the council costs nothing and is the right first call.
Gutters, fascia and soffit
Sight along the gutter run: it should fall evenly to the outlet with no bellies between the brackets. A sagging section is holding water and weight, and plants growing out of it are the same message louder. Check the wall below every joint for a vertical dark stripe, which is what a leaking joint paints on brickwork over a wet winter. Behind the gutter: peeling fascia paint, board ends dark and soft, gaps at the corners where birds get in. Timing the clear-out matters more than the frequency, which is a separate argument.
Valleys, from an upstairs window
Valleys cause the expensive leaks and you cannot see them from the ground. Open an upstairs window and look down where two slopes meet. What you often find is a wedge of leaf litter and moss part way down, damming the valley and pushing water sideways under the tiles. Do the same with any flat roof outlet or hopper head.
The flowerbed under the eaves
This is the check nobody publishes, and the ground keeps a record even when the roof looks fine from below. Walk the border under the eaves, then the foot of the downpipe and the gully. Fragments of tile or slate, crumbs of mortar from a fillet or a ridge, and a build-up of coarse grit all mean the roof is shedding material. Granules are the mineral surface washing off a felt covering. None of it is an emergency on its own, and all of it is the roof telling you what it does when you are not watching.
Moss, and why most of it stays
Moss is what homeowners get talked into work over. The honest position is the tile manufacturer’s own: low to moderate moss or lichen growth is a natural part of the ageing process and is not harmful to tiles or slates, and unless the roof is leaking or the gutters are blocked the advice is to leave it rather than access the roof to remove it. Moss in a gutter or damming a valley causes overflows and is worth clearing. Moss on a dry, sound slope is only a reading of how much sun and wind that slope gets. If somebody has offered to jet wash it off, read soft washing against pressure washing first.
Inside
The loft check, torch only, feet on the joists
Do the loft in daylight and, once your eyes have adjusted, turn the loft light off.
Stay on the joists. The ceiling between them is plasterboard and it will not hold you. Take a torch rather than relying on the light, keep one hand free, and where the loft is boarded over deep insulation, tread only where you can feel a joist underneath.
With the light off, look for pinpricks of daylight. A few at the ridge may be ventilation. A row of them along a slope means the underlay is torn or perished. Then put the torch on and read the timber: dark or blackened rafter feet at the eaves, rusty tide marks running down the underlay from a nail line, staining under a valley or a chimney. Each points at a place on the roof you can match to what you saw outside.
On a breezy day, watch the underlay. If it billows and snaps, air is moving through the roof space that should not be. Then put a hand on the insulation: damp in patches finds your leak, damp everywhere is more likely condensation, which is a different problem with a different fix.
The part that pays for itself
Photograph the roof now, and date the photographs
If you do one thing on this page, do this. Photograph your roof while it is sound and keep the files. It takes five minutes, costs nothing, and is the strongest evidence you can hold if a storm ever takes something off.
Here is why. When an insurer and a customer fall out over a roof claim, the Financial Ombudsman Service decides it, and it asks three questions. Were there storm conditions on or around the date? Is the damage consistent with what it generally sees as storm damage? And were storm conditions the main cause of the damage, or were there other factors that meant the damage might have happened anyway? That third question is where roof claims die. It is the gradual deterioration argument in the ombudsman’s own words, and a photograph of your roof intact in October answers it in one move.
One more thing from the same guidance. If the insurer relies on an exclusion, it has to show the exclusion applies, so a customer told their roof was worn out is not the one left proving a negative.
One frame per elevation, far enough back for the whole slope, then closer shots of the ridge, each verge, the chimney and any valley. Leave the files dated where the phone puts them, and repeat each autumn. If damage does happen, photograph the debris before you clear it, which is part of the first 24 hours, and the full list is in what evidence to gather.
To be clear about what we do: we can quote for the repair and put in writing what we found and what caused it. We do not handle claims, we do not deal with your insurer and we are not loss assessors.
After the winter
What to look at again in March, and why it is a different list
The spring look is diagnosis rather than prediction. You know what the roof looked like in October, so in March you are only asking what the winter did, and winter does two things that leave different marks.
The first is freeze-thaw, and the damage happens in January but becomes visible in March. Water soaks into a brick face, a mortar joint, a tile edge or a paving slab, freezes, expands and pushes the surface off from inside. It hides under wet and grime until things dry out, and then you see spalled brick faces, joints soft enough to rub out with a thumb, ridge bedding split along its length and flaky paving. It became legible in March, it did not happen then: frost damage after the thaw.
The second is wind, and wind leaves displacement rather than decay. This is where your October photographs earn their keep, because you compare rather than guess: a tile moved half an inch, a ridge tile turned out of line, verge pointing opened up, a flashing lifted from its chase. Half an inch is invisible alone and obvious side by side.
Then the flowerbed and the loft again, because a stain that was dry in October and wet in March dates itself. If you cannot say which night caused the damage, the ombudsman’s guidance is that where a customer does not know when the damage happened it is reasonable to look further back in the weather records.
Next steps
What to do with what you found
- Pick a dry, still, bright morning in September or early October.
- Work the order above: ridge, slopes, fillets, chimney, gutters, fascia and soffit, valleys from an upstairs window, then the flowerbed, then the loft.
- Photograph every elevation whether or not you found anything, and leave the files dated.
- Sort what you found into three piles: water is getting in now, material is loose and will move in the first proper gale, and it looks tired but is doing its job.
- Deal with the first two before the weather turns. The third can wait, and a roofer telling you it can wait is giving you the right answer rather than a soft one.
- If somebody knocks uninvited and says your roof is dangerous, agree to nothing on the doorstep. Read what your rights actually are first.
If you want the roof gone over properly rather than squinted at, that is what we do. Thomas comes out himself, looks at the things that actually fail, the nails, the battens, the underlay and the bedding, and puts it in writing. You can ask for a visit, and if it will see out another winter, that is what the quote will say.
Questions
Questions we get asked about this
Can you really check a roof properly without going up on it?
For an autumn condition check, yes. A dipped ridge, slipped or missing tiles, cracked mortar fillets, a leaning stack, sagging gutters and rotten fascia are all visible from ground level with binoculars. Valleys need an upstairs window, and the loft fills in the rest.
When is the best time to do a pre-winter roof check?
September or early October, on a dry, still, bright morning, which leaves time to get anything found dealt with before the weather turns. Gutter clearing is the exception and is better done once leaf fall has finished, which on evergreen streets is later than people expect.
Does moss on my roof need removing before winter?
Usually not. Low to moderate moss on a roof that is not leaking, with clear gutters and outlets, is a normal part of ageing, and the tile makers themselves advise leaving it. What does need clearing is moss that has ended up in a gutter or damming a valley, because that causes overflows.
Why photograph a roof that has nothing wrong with it?
Because a dated photograph of an undamaged roof answers the question insurers use to decline storm claims, which is whether the damage would have happened anyway. Photographs taken after the event cannot show what the roof looked like before it. It costs nothing and takes five minutes.
What should I do if I find a dip in the ridge line?
Get it looked at rather than watching it for another winter. A sag in the ridge is the one thing on this list that points at the roof structure rather than the covering, so it usually means a spread rafter, a deflected purlin or a failed wall plate. It does not fix itself.
Who wrote this
Thomas Hannen
Thomas owns Bournemouth Roofing & Building and prices every job himself rather than sending somebody else. The company is Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, number 15471719, registered in England and Wales. If you want to talk something through before you commit to anything, the site visit and the written itemised quote are both free.
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Want a proper look before the weather turns?
Thomas comes out himself, goes over the roof and puts in writing what he found. If it will see out another winter, he will tell you so.