Flat roofing in Wimborne Minster
Yard roofs, back additions and parapet roofs across Wimborne Minster and Colehill, with the access priced honestly.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
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Wimborne Minster's flat roofs are mostly out of sight: back additions off the town centre lanes, yard roofs behind the shops, and the roofs over the flats above them. Renewing the covering is maintenance. Getting the materials in and the rubbish out is often the harder half.
A third of the homes in Wimborne Minster are flats or maisonettes and a good share of the older centre is pre-1900, so the flat roofs sit behind stone and brick frontages with narrow access. You find out when a top floor ceiling stains, when water appears on the wall beside a flat roof, when felt has gone hard and split at the laps, or when a parapet gutter has backed up and put water inside the building instead of outside it.
We look at the covering, the parapet and the outlets together, because on this kind of building they fail as one thing. If a top floor ceiling is dripping now, ring 07435 839745 and tell us whether it is a flat above a shop.
The work
Yard roofs, back additions and the flats above the shops
The parapet, and the gutter behind it. On a Wimborne Minster town centre building the flat roof drains inside the line of the walls, so the outlet, the hopper and the downpipe are surrounded by structure. A blockage there does not run down the outside of the building.
It fills a gutter and comes over an upstand into the top of a wall, which is why the damp so often shows high up inside. We run water through and prove where it is going before quoting for a covering.
The covering, repaired. On an occupied Wimborne Minster building a repair that takes a morning is worth a great deal. A split at a lap, a blister lifted off the deck, a seam failed between two sheets, a trim whose fixings have pulled. Torch on felt is cut out, primed and welded back under a fresh cap sheet. A crack in GRP fibreglass is ground out and re-laminated. EPDM rubber is cleaned and bonded down again.
The covering, renewed. EPDM rubber lays as one sheet with no joints across the field. GRP fibreglass is formed in place, which suits a yard roof full of kerbs, outlets and a rooflight. A built up three layer torch on felt system still does a lot of the back additions in Wimborne Minster, and single ply is the answer over a whole ground floor behind a shop. An old lead roof behind a parapet that is still sound is left alone.
The deck and the fall. A Victorian back addition in Wimborne Minster often carries plain boarding across the joists rather than plywood, OSB or chipboard, and it was laid nearly level. Firrings over the joists, or tapered insulation inside a warm roof, get the water moving to the rainwater outlet again. Ponding holds grit and moss on the surface and stops the roof drying, and standing water in a corner tells you the fall and the outlet have parted company. A bubble underfoot means the boards have already taken water.
The junctions, and the height of everything. A lead cover flashing dressed into a chase raked out of a mortar joint, the drip and apron at the front edge, the kerb round a rooflight, a coping and a cavity tray formed rather than sealed, and a collar round every skylight, lantern, Velux, hatch, soil pipe and vent pipe. Raising a parapet to take the extra thickness of a warm roof is a detail to design rather than improvise, and a warm roof is what we would build over a flat: PIR above the deck, the vapour control layer below it, the dew point clear of the timbers, no condensation and no interstitial damp. BS 6229 covers it. A yard roof is a day, a back addition with a new deck two or three working days.
How it runs
Flat roof work behind the shops and on the estates
Thomas comes out, gets up to the roof and lifts a corner of the covering to see the deck before he writes anything. The quote then lists each part separately: access, stripping the old felt or membrane, any new deck or firrings, insulation, the new membrane, and each upstand, outlet and edge trim, plus disposal. Thomas stays your point of contact for all of it.
In Wimborne Minster's town centre a flat roof is often a rear addition or a roof over a shop, reached through a yard or a passage. On the later estates it is more often a garage or a single storey extension that a tower reaches from the drive. The roof is never left open overnight. Old covering is bagged and taken away that afternoon, and if the joists under a wet deck are soft, we send you a photo of them with the cost of new ones and wait for your yes.
Re-covering in the same form is maintenance. If your address is listed, the council page on listed building consent is the place to start, and section 7 of the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990 is the reason. The Wimborne Minster Conservation Area covers the town centre, so whether your address sits inside it is worth asking the council too. Renewing most of a covering brings the roof under Approved Document L, so the insulation is upgraded and Dorset Council building control are told on a building notice.
Cost
What sets the cost of a new flat roof covering
We will not give you a rate per square metre over the phone. The area is the easy bit to measure and the least useful.
How we reach it. A roof over a shop's back room, reached through the shop or a shared yard, means carrying every roll and board by hand and working round opening hours. A garage roof in Merley or Colehill with a drive in front is loaded straight from the van. A tower does most single storey roofs. Anything over a two storey wall wants a scaffold, and it stays while the deck is open. The work at height rules make that a line in the quote.
The deck. Chipboard that has been wet for years swells and goes soft underfoot. If it has, it comes off and new ply goes down. We lift a corner first, because this is the biggest swing in the price.
Falls and outlets. A lot of older flat roofs were laid dead level. Water ponds, and the covering fails where it sits. Firrings put a fall back in, and each outlet, upstand and edge trim is priced on its own.
Who is paying. If the flat roof is over a block of flats, the freeholder instructs and the service charge pays, so the agent needs our quote too.
Put these to any other quote. Which membrane system, and how many layers? Is the deck being renewed or covered over? Are firrings included to correct the fall?
If it is coming through
Rain coming through a flat roof ceiling
Ring us and skip the form. Water through a flat roof usually comes from a split, a blister or a lifted upstand, and it keeps soaking the deck after the rain stops. Catch the drip, clear the room below and do not climb onto the roof yourself.
On the first visit we find the entry point and cover it, with a temporary patch or a weighted sheet, so the room can dry out. We price the permanent work once we can see how far the deck has gone. Booked work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm. When it is urgent, phone, and if we miss you we will call straight back when we are free.
Worth knowing
In the town centre, access is priced before the roof is
The conservation area over the centre of Wimborne Minster is about appearance, and most of these flat roofs cannot be seen from anywhere public, so the covering is usually your choice and we will say so on the visit. What actually shapes a town centre quote is getting to the roof.
A back addition behind a terrace off the square can have no vehicle access at all: everything goes through the building or over a wall, the old covering comes out the same way, and the platform has to be built in a space measured in feet rather than metres.
That is why two quotes for the same small roof in Wimborne Minster can look so different. One has priced a scaffold, a permit and hand loading, and the other has assumed a van on the pavement. Tell us when you ring whether there is a rear lane, a shared yard or only the front door, and whether the building is occupied during the day. It changes the method, and it goes on the quote as its own line rather than turning up as an extra later.
Who you are dealing with
Who comes out to price your flat roof
Wimborne Minster is 8.1 miles from our base in Boscombe. We work across the town, Colehill, Pamphill, Merley and the BH21 side of the Stour. Planning and building control there sit with Dorset Council.
Your contract would be with Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, a company registered in England and Wales, number 15471719, owned by Thomas Hannen. He comes to the address, gets on the roof and prices the work himself. A verified customer scored us 10 out of 10 on Checkatrade. You pay nothing for the visit or for the written quote, which is broken down line by line. Before you book a visit in Wimborne Minster, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.
Planning at a glance
Do you need planning permission in Wimborne Minster?
Most repairs in Wimborne Minster 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.
| Question | In Wimborne Minster |
|---|---|
| Who decides | Dorset Council is the planning authority for Wimborne Minster. Dorset Council's heritage pages set out what it controls. |
| Conservation area | Yes: Wimborne Minster Conservation Area and St Johns Rowlands Hill Conservation Area. They cover parts of Wimborne Minster, so check whether your street is inside one. |
| Listed buildings | Yes, there are listed buildings in and around Wimborne Minster. If yours is one, work can need listed building consent. |
| Protected landscape | No National Park or National Landscape covers Wimborne Minster. |
Questions
Questions about flat roofs in Wimborne Minster
Water is coming in at the top of the wall inside. Is that the flat roof?
Often it is the parapet gutter behind it. On a parapet roof the outlet and downpipe run inside the building line, so a blockage puts water into the structure, not down the outside wall. We run water through to prove where it is going before quoting.
A third of the town is flats. Who orders work on the roof?
On a leasehold flat the roof belongs to the freeholder and is paid for out of the service charge, so the managing agent orders it. We will still look and put the fault in writing on a free site visit, so you have something to send them.
Do I need permission in the conservation area?
Not for a like for like re-cover. It is a change of appearance on something visible from a street or footpath that raises the question, and Dorset Council is who you ask. On a listed building, ask before anything is ordered, even where the roof is out of sight.
How long does the work take?
A yard roof is a day. A back addition needing a new deck, firrings to put a fall back and a flashing chased into the wall is two or three working days, and hand loading through a building adds to that. We will not open a deck we cannot close the same day.
Nearby, and next door
Flat roofing near Wimborne Minster
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Get a price for your Wimborne Minster flat roof
Tell us the address, what you have noticed and how we would get to the roof. We will come and look, and put an itemised price in writing.