Flat roofing in Lytchett Matravers
Flat roof repairs, re-covering and warm roof build ups across Lytchett Matravers and the BH16 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.
Most Lytchett Matravers flat roofs are the ones that came with the house, and most of them are now the same age. That is why we look at the deck and the falls before we look at the surface, and why we quote a repair when a repair will do.
The reasons people ring are fairly consistent. The neighbour has just had theirs done and it has prompted a look at yours. There is a damp smell in the garage and a drip landing on the car. Or a ceiling has marked and the mark has come back after a dry spell rather than fading away. The village filled out through the 1970s and early 1980s and the flat roofs went on with it, laid to little or no fall, so none of that is a surprise. It is also not worth guessing at. We come out, walk the roof, work out where the water is supposed to leave it, lift a corner of the covering where that can sensibly be done, and photograph the lot before any figure is mentioned.
Day to day
Garage roofs, utility roofs and the bits in between
Most of it is repair work. Estate roofs of this vintage fail in predictable places. A fold that has cracked. A blister risen and burst. A lap that has let go. An edge trim whose fixings have worked out. An outlet packed with moss off the tiles above it. Each of those is hours rather than days, and the blocked outlet is behind more stained ceilings than the rest put together. We find where water is entering by following the falls, because the mark inside is never above the hole outside.
When it is past repair. A covering that has gone hard has nothing left to give and it comes off. What replaces it depends on the roof. One bonded sheet of EPDM rubber over a plain garage, with no seam anywhere across the middle of it. GRP fibreglass where the roof gets walked on, laid wet and cured to a single skin with its own trims. Torch on felt, three layers under a mineral cap sheet, where the roof is cut up with upstands. Single ply, welded, on the larger spans. Two to three working days covers a garage or a small extension.
Deck and insulation. Plywood, OSB or chipboard underneath, and it is nearly always the chipboard that has softened. Firm boards are covered over, soft boards come out, and the joists get checked while they are bare. Ponding tells you the fall is wrong or the outlet has been built over, and firrings or tapered insulation fix that properly. If the deck is coming off anyway we would rather rebuild as a warm roof, with the insulation above the deck in rigid PIR and a vapour control layer beneath, keeping the timber above the dew point and leaving interstitial condensation nowhere to form. These started life as cold roofs and that is exactly why they rotted, which is the case BS 6229:2025 on flat roofs and Approved Document L both make.
The detail round the edge. An upstand and a chased cover flashing where the roof meets the house. A lead apron where lead is already there. A cavity tray where the wall has a cavity. Parapets and copings treated as roof rather than as wall. A kerb built for a rooflight, a lantern, a Velux, a hatch, a soil pipe or a vent pipe. Then drip, edge trim, gutter, hopper and downpipe, all of which have to work or nothing above them matters.
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.
Re-covering the roof you already have is maintenance. There is no planning permission to seek, permitted development covers it, and Planning Portal guidance sets the limit. Deck over a habitable room, or convert the garage, and building control applies under building notice or an application with full plans. No conservation area covers the village, and where a building is one of the listed ones, listed building consent comes before anything else.
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 garage you can park alongside, a utility roof through a side gate, and a roof over a first floor room are three different jobs at identical square metres. 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 short run from us, so a Lytchett Matravers roof letting water in is normally seen the same day or the next. The phone is answered 24 hours for emergencies; scheduled work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm.
Worth knowing
Estate roofs of the same age tend to fail in the same year
When a road was built in one go, the flat roofs on it went on in one go too, from the same rolls, laid the same way. So it is common round here for two or three neighbours to be dealing with the same problem in the same winter. That is worth knowing for a practical reason: if the roof next door has just been done, ask what they found under the covering. It is a fair guide to what is under yours, and it saves a lot of guessing.
It matters more where garages sit in a linked run rather than standing alone. Then one roof often drains across or into the next, the upstand between them is shared, and doing your half in isolation can push water onto somebody else's deck or leave a joint that nobody owns. If that is your set up, tell us when you ring. We will look at the whole run, say plainly where your roof stops and the neighbour's starts, and price only your side while making sure the junction between them is left watertight rather than left open.
Who you are dealing with
A local firm you can check
We cover Lytchett Matravers, Lytchett Minster, Upton, Beacon Hill and the BH16 villages west of Poole. 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
Lytchett Matravers questions we get asked
My neighbour's garage roof joins mine. Can you do just my half?
Usually yes, and that is normally what happens. The care is all in the junction between the two, because a new covering that stops dead at a shared upstand simply moves the leak. We will show you where the boundary falls and leave the joint sealed rather than open.
How long does a garage roof take?
Two to three working days is normal, and a repair is often the same day. Renewing the deck, correcting the falls with firrings or fitting a rooflight adds to that. A bonded or torch on system needs a dry deck, so the forecast has a say in when we start.
Do you need to get into the loft or the garage?
We like to. Seeing the underside tells us whether a leak has been running for years and whether the joists have taken any of it. Most of the survey happens on the roof itself, and for a porch or a bay we often do not need to come inside at all.
Will the new roof be thicker than the old one?
If it is being built as a warm roof, yes, because the insulation sits above the deck. That is why we measure the upstand height at the wall and the clearance under any door on the site visit, so nothing gets discovered halfway through the job.
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Get a price for your Lytchett Matravers flat roof
Tell us the address and what you have noticed. We will come out, look under the covering where we can, and put an itemised price in writing. No charge, and no obligation.