Flat roofing in Iwerne Minster
Flat roof repairs, re-covering and warm roof build ups in Iwerne Minster and the DT11 villages. Free site visit, free written itemised quote.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
Flat roofs in Iwerne Minster are nearly all small and nearly all attached to something old. The work is in the junction with the building, not in the middle of the covering, and that is where we start looking.
Three things bring people to us here. A surveyor has flagged the flat roof during a sale and the buyer wants it priced. A damp patch has come up in the corner of a kitchen ceiling and it grows every time it rains hard. Or the covering has visibly gone: hard, grey, cracked at the folds, with moss holding water along one edge. Much of the village was built before the First World War, so what these roofs are attached to is a lean-to, an outshot, a bay top, a porch, or a garage put up later against an older wall. Old buildings hide the evidence well, so we do not guess from the ground. We get up onto the roof, follow the falls, check every point where the covering turns up a wall, and put our head inside where there is anything to see.
The roofs here
Lean-tos, outshots and the roofs out the back
What fails is almost always the abutment. On a lean-to or an outshot the covering has only a short run to make, and it is where it turns up an old wall that it gives out. Dressed against the face and pointed in cement, it lifts within a season or two. So we look there first, then at the outlet, then at the folds and the laps. A crack, a burst blister, an opened seam or a trim off its fixings is a morning's work rather than a new roof.
Re-covering something small and irregular. Torch on felt suits these roofs. Three layers built up under a mineral cap sheet will follow an odd shape, run up several upstands and turn a corner without complaint. A plain rectangle is quicker in EPDM rubber, bonded down as a single sheet. Anywhere people stand takes GRP fibreglass, laid wet and cured to one skin with the trims in it. Single ply, welded at the joints, is for roofs bigger than the ones in this village. A day for a small roof, two to three working days for a garage or an extension.
What the deck tells us. Older roofs here can be boarded rather than sheeted, and where they are plywood, OSB or chipboard it is the chipboard that has gone. Firm decking gets covered over. Soft decking comes off, and the joist ends nearest the wall get the closest look, because that is where a slow leak has been sitting. Water lying about after rain means no fall was ever cut, so firrings or tapered insulation go in before any new covering. Where there is a room below, the rebuild is better as a warm roof: PIR above the deck, a vapour control layer under it, the timber kept above the dew point and interstitial condensation designed out. BS 6229:2025 on flat roofs, and Approved Document L over a heated room, both push that way.
Lead, upstands and openings. A cover flashing cut into a chase and wedged, not smeared along the surface. An apron in lead, in lengths short enough that it can move without splitting. An upstand carried up behind it with room to spare. A cavity tray only where a cavity exists, which on these buildings is often not the case. Copings and parapets sorted as part of the roof. A kerb formed for a rooflight, a lantern, a Velux, a hatch, a soil pipe or a vent pipe. Drip and edge trim, then the gutter, hopper and downpipe below.
How it runs
From your call to a written price
Same team from first visit to last, one person to ring, and no sub-contracting your work out to somebody you have never met. 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 rather than 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.
A re-cover in the same materials is maintenance: no planning permission, and permitted development covers it, with the limits set out in Planning Portal guidance. Much of the village lies within the Iwerne Minster conservation area and there are dozens of listed entries around it, so where a roof shows, or a building is listed, listed building consent is checked before we specify. Building control comes in separately through building notice or an application with full plans when a new deck goes over a habitable room.
Cost
What decides the price of a flat roof
No rate per square metre, because the square metres are the easy part and what is under the covering is what decides the job.
Getting to it. A porch roof off a ladder, an outshot behind a cottage with nothing but the house to carry materials through, and a garage on open ground are three different jobs. A garage or a single storey extension will often come off a tower, anything above a two storey wall wants a scaffold, and the platform has to stand while the deck is open rather than for an afternoon. The work at height rules are why it is a priced line rather than something folded into a rate.
The deck under the covering. A sound deck can be re-covered. Chipboard that has been wet for years, or ply that gives underfoot, has to come off and be replaced, and you cannot tell which you have from the ground or from a photograph. We lift a corner before quoting, because the deck is the single biggest swing in the price.
The falls, and where the water is meant to go. Most flat roofs that fail were never laid to a fall, or the fall runs at an outlet that has since been blocked or built over. Correcting it with firrings is more work than laying a membrane and it is the difference between a roof that lasts and one that ponds. Upstands, edge trims and each outlet are priced one at a time, because that is where the hours and the leaks both are.
Comparing quotes? Ask which system is being quoted and how many layers, whether the deck is being renewed or covered over, whether the falls are being corrected with firrings, how the upstands, outlets and edge trims are detailed, and whether the scaffold and the skip are in the price. Two quotes for the same job are usually two different jobs.
If it is coming through
Water through a flat roof
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. The village is a fair way north of us, but a roof putting water into a room still gets covered on the first visit. The phone is answered 24 hours for emergencies; scheduled work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm.
Worth knowing
Old walls change how the roof has to be finished
Most of the walls a flat roof meets in this village are solid, not cavity, and they were built to let moisture move through and out again. That changes two things about the job. There is no cavity to put a tray into, so the whole defence at that junction is the height of the upstand and how well the cover flashing is chased and pointed in. And the pointing wants to be a lime mortar to match what is already there, because a hard cement fillet on soft old brick or stone cracks off in a season and takes the face with it.
It also changes how far we would go with a sealed warm roof build up against that kind of wall. The aim is to keep water out of the roof without stopping the wall breathing where the two meet. In practice that means detailing the abutment properly rather than running a bead of mastic along it, and it means being honest that on an old building the flashing is the part that needs doing well. If a quote you are comparing does not say what happens at the wall, that is the question to ask.
Who you are dealing with
A local firm you can check
We cover Iwerne Minster, Fontmell Magna, Child Okeford, Shroton and the DT11 villages along the A350 north of Blandford. You are dealing with Bournemouth Roofing & Building, the trading name of Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 15471719, which you can look up in a minute. Thomas Hannen's business, and he is the one who comes out to price the job, not a salesman. A verified customer's 10 out of 10 on Checkatrade. The visit and the written quote are both free.
Questions
Iwerne Minster questions we get asked
My house is listed. Can you still re-cover the flat roof?
Yes, but consent comes first where the material or the appearance changes. Like for like maintenance is usually straightforward. Tell us when you ring and we will write the specification so it says exactly what goes on, in what finish, which is what the council will want to see anyway.
Why does the flashing matter so much on an old wall?
Because there is no cavity behind it doing a second job. On a modern wall a cavity tray catches what gets past. On a solid wall the flashing and the upstand are the only defence, so they have to be chased in and pointed properly rather than dressed against the surface and sealed.
Is a repair worth doing, or should it all come off?
It depends entirely on the deck. If the boards are sound and the falls work, a repair or a re-cover over the existing deck is good value. If the deck is wet through, patching buys a winter. We lift a corner on the site visit so the answer is based on what is there, not on a guess.
How much disruption is there inside the house?
Very little. Almost all of it happens outside, and for a garage or a porch we may not need to come in at all. Where the roof is over a room we would like to see the ceiling first. Nothing is left open overnight and the site gets swept at the end of each day.
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Tell us the address and what you have noticed. We will come out, look hard at the junctions, and put an itemised price in writing. No charge, and no obligation.