Flat roofing in Boscombe

Mending what is there. On a Boscombe dormer top the usual fault is a lap that has opened or a blister where damp under the covering has lifted it. On a back-addition it is more often a trim torn loose by wind coming round the building, or a seam split where the roof meets a wall that moves.

Felt gets the bad piece cut out and a new cap sheet welded over; a hairline crack in GRP fibreglass is ground out and laminated over; a peeled EPDM rubber seam is cleaned back and bonded. You are looking at an afternoon for most of them, not a week.

When it needs a new covering. Felt that cracks when you bend a corner, or fibreglass crazed all over, is past mending. Which system replaces it depends on the roof. A dormer is small, awkward to reach and has three edges against tile, so a single sheet of EPDM with few joints makes sense. A back-addition with a rooflight, a lantern and a hatch to the flat above is better in GRP, laid wet so every kerb is formed in one piece. Built up three layer torch on felt is still a good answer on a large area with people walking on it, and single ply membranes belong on the roofs of the bigger blocks. Most back-additions come in at two or three working days with a new deck.

The deck and the falls. Under the covering is plywood, OSB or, on a lot of older extensions, chipboard that swells the first time it gets wet. We look before we quote. Many of the back-additions in Boscombe were built dead level, so water ponds against a parapet with nowhere to go. Firrings over the joists, or tapered insulation, give it a fall to the rainwater outlet. Standing water is not a leak on its own, but pooling holds grit against the surface and finds every weakness.

Where they actually leak. The upstand against the house wall, the cover flashing in its chase, the drip and apron at the front edge, the kerb round a rooflight or lantern, and the outlet. On the back-additions behind the Boscombe shops the roof usually runs up to a parapet with a coping and a lead abutment, and that junction, not the middle of the roof, is where most of the water gets in. Soil pipes and vent pipes from the flats above each need a proper collar.

Warm roof or cold roof. A warm roof puts PIR insulation above the deck on a vapour control layer, and it is what we would normally build. A cold roof keeps the insulation between the joists and must be ventilated, or condensation forms in the timbers where the dew point falls, the interstitial damp that BS 6229 is written to avoid. A warm roof raises the finished level, which matters at a door onto a balcony. Renew most of a roof and it becomes a thermal element under Part L, so building control is notified.

One person to ring from the first visit to the last. The quote is itemised, not a figure on the back of a card: access, stripping the old covering, any new deck or firrings, the insulation, the membrane and each upstand, outlet and edge trim, and disposal on separate lines, so you can compare it properly against anyone else's.

Nothing is left open or unusable overnight. The site is swept at the end of each day instead of the end of the job, and what comes out leaves with us. If something turns up once we start that nobody could have seen, you get a photograph and a price before we carry on.

Re-covering a flat roof in the same shape needs no planning permission, and a like-for-like repair needs no application inside Boscombe's five conservation areas either, though the council keeps the list if you want to check your street. A new rooflight or a raised roof on a flat is different, because flats have no permitted development rights, and we tell you before you commit.

Ring rather than use the form. A flat roof that has split, blistered or lifted at an upstand puts water straight onto a ceiling, and once the deck is wet the damage carries on after the rain stops.

The first visit is about getting it covered and dry, and we price the permanent job once we can see how much of the deck has gone. If the roof sits over somebody else's flat, or over a shared stairwell, tell the managing agent straight away as well as us. Scheduled work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm. For anything urgent, ring rather than use the form, and if we cannot pick up we ring you back as soon as we can.

Call now: 07435 839745

Most homes in Boscombe are flats, many of them in big Victorian and Edwardian villas divided up decades ago, and on a leasehold flat the roof is almost never yours. It belongs to the freeholder and is paid for out of the service charge.

So a Boscombe leaseholder with a stain under a flat roof usually cannot book the repair, however much they want it done. The quickest route is to tell the managing agent in writing. We will still come and look and put what the roof needs on paper, addressed to whoever pays, so the agent has something to act on.

If you sit on a residents' company, one thing is worth knowing before you gather quotes. Where the work would cost any single leaseholder more than a set amount, the leaseholders must be formally consulted first under section 20 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985, and that process has notice periods. A felt patch over a bedroom will not trigger it. A new roof over a whole back-addition probably will, so start in spring rather than November. The shops are the other twist: a flat roof behind a shop can belong to the shop's lease rather than the flats above, so check before you instruct.

Nearby places we also cover for flat roofing, with straight-line distances from Boscombe, and the other trades we offer in Boscombe itself.

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