Flat roofing in Everton

What we take off. In Everton it is nearly always felt. Either a three layer built up system finished with a mineral cap sheet, or a single torch on layer someone laid straight over the last one. It fails as splits along the creases, blisters where damp got shut in, and a lifted seam or a failed seam where the covering turns up an upstand. Once the surface is chalky and hard there is nothing left to repair.

What goes back. EPDM rubber on a plain rectangle, bonded down in one sheet with no lap and no seam anywhere in the open part of the roof. GRP fibreglass where the roof has kerbs, corners and upstands, because it is laminated in place and the detail is part of the same skin. Single ply, hot air welded, on a long run. Torch on felt still has its place where a building suits it.

The deck and the falls. Lift the covering and you meet plywood, OSB or chipboard decking on joists. Wet chipboard swells, gives underfoot and has to come off. The firrings on the joists create the fall, and a roof laid without one holds standing water in the same corner all winter. That ponding does more damage than any storm. Where re-firring is not practical we build the fall in tapered insulation. BS 6229 sets out how it should be done.

Sun rooms and anything heated. If the room below is heated, renewing the covering brings the insulation up with it under Part L. The safe answer is a warm roof, where the joists and the deck sit inside the insulated envelope, with PIR above the boards and a vapour control layer beneath it. The other answer, insulation between the joists, is a cold roof, and it puts the deck the wrong side of the dew point. Interstitial condensation then forms inside the construction, and the first sign is a soft board rather than a drip. Building control are notified and see it open.

Edges, junctions and openings. Most leaks live here rather than out in the middle of a roof. The abutment gets a chase, a lead cover flashing dressed into it and a cavity tray above. A parapet gets a coping and an apron. Every opening stands proud on a kerb so the covering can turn up an upstand: a rooflight, a lantern, a Velux style flat roof window, a hatch, a soil and vent pipe. The open sides finish over a drip trim, and the rainwater outlet runs into a hopper, a downpipe or the gutter. A garage is a day, a sun room two or three working days, and we say how long before we start.

We never price a flat roof by the square metre. The boards under the covering decide far more than its size.

Decking. Garages and extensions added to post-war bungalows were often boarded with chipboard or thin ply. Years of slow leaks turn it spongy, and then it has to come out. Firm boards can take a new covering. The flap Thomas cuts before quoting tells you which.

Drainage. Many older flat roofs in Everton were laid almost level, so rain lies in a puddle against the upstands. Fitting firrings to give a real fall costs more than a straight re-cover, but it is what ends the ponding. Each outlet, upstand and trim appears on the quote separately.

Height. A garage roof off an Everton drive is tower work. A dormer on a chalet bungalow sits higher and may need scaffold, kept up until the deck is sealed. Safe edges come from the work at height rules, and that platform has its own line on the quote.

Weather off the sea. The south west wind lifts any edge that is not bonded well, and salt attacks metal trims and fixings. Pick a system and trim detail that can take it.

Questions for any other quote: which membrane and how many layers, new decking or not, firrings or not, and are the scaffold and skip included.

You are close enough to the water here for salt to settle on a roof and stay there, and it keeps the surface damp between showers rather than letting it dry out. Rubber and fibreglass do not care. The metal does. The aluminium drip trim, the screws through it, the lead at the abutment and the gutter brackets all corrode from the edge inwards, and a flat roof that looks sound can already have lost what holds its perimeter down.

So on an Everton roof the specification changes on the seaward side. Non ferrous or stainless fixings as standard, trims in a coated finish rather than mill aluminium, and no mixing of metals at a joint, because two different metals in a wet salty lap corrode each other faster than either would alone. We also keep the outlets clear at handover, since salt-damp roofs grow moss and moss blocks an outlet in a season. It is a small part of the price and it is the part that decides how long the roof lasts.

From our base in Boscombe, Everton is 10.8 miles along the coast road. We look after flat roofs there and in Hordle, Milford on Sea, Lymington and the rest of SO41. Planning and building control here sit with New Forest District Council.

The company you deal with is Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, number 15471719 on the register for England and Wales. Its owner, Thomas Hannen, gets up on your flat roof himself before he gives you a figure. On Checkatrade one verified customer scored us 10 out of 10. Neither the site visit nor the itemised written quote costs you anything. Before you book a visit in Everton, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.

Most repairs in Everton need no application at all. What decides whether a change to the outside of your house does is who the council is, whether a conservation area or a listing applies, and whether the place sits in a protected landscape.