Flat roofing in Winterborne Stickland

The deck comes first. Everything else follows from it. Lift a covering and you find plywood, OSB or chipboard decking laid over joists, with firrings on top forming the fall towards the outlet.

Chipboard that has been wet for a season swells, gives underfoot and has to come off, and that is the biggest single swing in the price of the job. On an older building in Winterborne Stickland the joists are rarely level, so the fall gets built rather than assumed. Where re-firring will not work we form the fall in tapered insulation instead, and BS 6229 is where those falls come from.

Why they leak. Ponding first. A roof holding standing water in the same corner all winter is a roof with no fall, and it will finish a new covering as surely as it finished the old one. Then the covering itself: felt splits along the creases once it goes brittle, blisters where damp was sealed in underneath, and lifts at a seam where it turns up an upstand. A failed seam is the one that fools people, because water travels under the whole roof and comes through somewhere else entirely.

What we lay. EPDM rubber on a plain rectangle, bonded down in a single sheet with no lap in the open field. GRP fibreglass where there are kerbs, corners and upstands to laminate round, or where the roof gets walked on. Single ply, hot air welded, on a long run. Torch on felt, in a three layer built up system with a mineral cap sheet, still suits some buildings better than any of them.

Insulation, if the room below is heated. Renewing the covering brings it into scope under Part L. The insulation belongs above the deck, over a vapour control layer, in PIR, with the membrane on top. That is a warm roof and the whole structure stays on the dry side of the dew point. A cold roof, with the insulation between the joists, leaves the boards below it, and interstitial condensation forms inside the construction and rots them from above long before anything shows outside. Building control get notified and see it before it is closed up.

The junctions and the openings. This is the slow part of the job and the part that decides whether it leaks. A chase raked into the wall at the abutment, lead dressed in as a cover flashing, and a cavity tray above it, or a stepped flashing worked into the joints where the wall is old and soft. A coping on the parapet and an apron below it. A kerb under every rooflight, lantern, Velux style flat roof window, hatch and soil or vent pipe. A drip trim along the free edges. And a rainwater outlet running to a hopper, a downpipe or the gutter. A garage is a day, an extension two or three working days.

Square metres are the easy part of a flat roof, and they tell you little about the price. The deck. The boards under the membrane are the biggest variable. Sound ply can take a new covering. Chipboard that has been wet swells, sags and has to come off. You cannot tell from the ground, which is why we look under a corner before quoting.

Falls and outlets. Plenty of flat roofs in Winterborne Stickland fail because they were laid dead level, or because the water runs to an outlet that was later blocked. Firrings to set a proper fall are more work than a membrane alone, but they stop ponding for good.

Where it meets the house. On an older wall of brick or flint, the upstand and the lead flashing chased into the joint are where leaks begin. Each upstand, outlet and length of edge trim is priced separately.

Access. A tower in the garden is a small line. A scaffold beside a lane, or around a back addition with no side way, is a bigger one, and the work at height rules set how it is built.

Ask other quotes which membrane system and how many layers, whether the deck is replaced or overlaid, and whether the falls are being corrected with firrings.

Winterborne Stickland is recorded as having a conservation area of its own, and there are a couple of dozen listed entries in and around the village. It is worth checking with Dorset Council whether your house is inside the boundary. What people assume is that it covers everything. It usually does not. A village conservation area is normally drawn round the historic core, and plenty of houses on the edges sit outside it entirely.

That is worth ten minutes of your time before you order a roof, because the two situations are genuinely different. Outside the boundary, the covering on your garage or extension is your own decision and there is nothing to apply for. Inside it, appearance is controlled, so changing felt for a light coloured membrane, or putting in a rooflight or a lantern that can be seen, is something to agree first. Dorset Council hold the boundary maps and will tell you. Give us the address at the first visit and we will look at it with you, then put the position in writing next to the price so nothing depends on somebody's memory.

Thomas Hannen owns the business and is the one who gets up on your roof and writes the price. The company is Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 15471719. Before you book a visit in Winterborne Stickland, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.

We are about 19.1 miles from Winterborne Stickland, based at 80a Wolverton Road, Boscombe, and we work across the village, Winterborne Whitechurch, Winterborne Houghton, Blandford Forum and the rest of DT11, all under Dorset Council. A verified customer rated us 10 out of 10 on Checkatrade. We do not charge for the visit or for the itemised written quote.

Most repairs in Winterborne Stickland 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.