Roof repairs in Blandford Forum

Roof repairs

One fault, found and fixed

If water is coming in now, ring 07435 839745 and say which room it is dripping into and whether the roof is tile, slate or felt.

A ridge tile has come off an estate house and landed in the flower bed. The ceiling of an attic bedroom near Market Place has a wet corner beside the dormer window. The felt on the garage behind the house has blistered, and the wall below is damp.

We look at the slopes from the road and the garden, go up where a roof ladder is safe, and inspect the underside from the loft. You get photographs of the fault and a written, itemised quote to fix it.

The repairs

Where the water gets in on a Blandford roof

Blandford has two families of roof, and they fail in different ways. Most homes are on estates built after the war, the 1970s and early 1980s busiest of all, under concrete interlocking tile on bitumen felt. The Georgian centre and the Victorian streets round it are plain clay tile and slate.

Ridges and hips on the estate houses. A concrete roof from the seventies had its ridge and hip tiles bedded on sand and cement. Forty-odd winters crack that bedding away from the tile, rain gets into the joint, the tile rocks, and one windy night it lifts. On a hipped bungalow the hips run down to all four corners, so there is a lot of bedding to lose. We lift the run, clean it back and either re-bed it in fresh mortar with a screw or clip in every tile, or change it to a dry-fixed ridge and hip to BS 8612, which leaves nothing to crack. A run is about a day. On a gable house the verge mortar drops out in lumps the same way, and a clip-on dry verge fixed into the batten ends replaces it.

Slipped and broken concrete tiles. Tiles of that age were nailed on some courses only and held by their weight and the interlock with the next tile. When a nail rusts through or a batten end goes soft, a tile creeps down and opens the lap, and wind-driven rain runs in underneath. We lift the courses above, refit the tile and clip or nail it, because BS 5534 now expects every tile to be mechanically fixed. Some profiles from those years are no longer made, so we look for a matching one, new or reclaimed, before anything else is touched.

Felt perishing at the eaves. The black felt under these tiles goes brittle first where it laps over the fascia into the gutter, then tears and drips down the back of the gutter onto the board. We lift the bottom course, cut the perished strip back, fit an eaves carrier tray and lap new breathable membrane over it. If the fascia behind has softened, that is fascias, soffits and guttering in Blandford Forum, on the same visit.

Where the garage or extension meets the house. A lean-to or garage roof against a two-storey wall relies on lead flashing and soakers, or on a plain mortar fillet on a cheaper build. The fillet cracks, and a damp patch appears on the extension ceiling against that wall. We cut the fillet out and fit stepped lead with a soaker under each tile, pointed into the brick joints. Allow a day.

Felt flat roofs on garages, porches and rear extensions. These blister, split along the laps, and hold puddles where the deck has sagged. A split over a dry, firm deck is cut out and a new layer bonded over it, with the upstand and outlet checked. A deck that gives underfoot has taken on water, and no patch stays stuck to it, so that roof wants a new covering in felt, GRP or EPDM. More on flat roofing in Blandford Forum.

Clay tile and slate in the older streets. Plain clay tiles slip when the nail or peg gives up, and the lime torching underneath crumbles out. A cracked clay tile is slid out and a reclaimed one of the same colour and size is hung in its place on a hook. On the slate terraces, such as the early Victorian stucco row at 28 to 34 Orchard Street, a slipped slate has lost its nail, and it goes back on a copper or lead tingle.

Valleys and chimneys behind the town houses. Where two ranges meet at the back of a centre house there is a lead valley, and old lead splits along its folds. Mastic over a split lasts a season, so we lift the tiles either side and lay new lead over a day or two. The chimney is the other leak on these roofs: the stepped flashing, the soakers and the back gutter behind the stack. If the flaunching on top of the stack has cracked, new lead alone will not stop it, which is chimney repairs.

After a gale. A ridge or verge tile on the lawn is wind finding a joint that was already weak. Claiming on home insurance? Read the three questions the Financial Ombudsman asks about a storm claim, and keep the dated photographs we take. In a block of flats or a flat over a shop, the freeholder or managing agent is the one who orders roof repairs, so send them our quote.

Repair or replace. When tiles are cracking across the whole slope, the felt falls apart as each tile is lifted and the battens are rotten at the ends, the roof has no life left in it, and a re-roof by our roofers in Blandford Forum is the honest answer.

How it runs

From your call to a written price

One person to ring from the first visit to the last. The quote is itemised, not a figure on the back of a card: access, where the fault is and what is being opened up to reach it, each tile, slate, ridge or flashing being renewed and what with, making good, 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.

In the town centre, inside the Blandford Forum and Approaches Conservation Area, mending a roof in the same clay tile or slate counts as repair, and the Planning Portal guidance explains where a change of material starts to need planning. If your house is on the list, read Dorset Council's page on listed building consent before anything beyond a like for like repair.

If it is leaking now

Water coming through a ceiling

Ring rather than use the form. Put a bowl under the drip, keep anything electrical away from the wet patch, and if a ceiling is bulging keep everyone out from under it. The first visit is about finding where the water gets in and making the roof weathertight, and the permanent repair is priced in writing once the fault can be seen properly. When you ring about a Blandford roof, tell us if the wet patch is in an attic room or under a bedroom ceiling. Scheduled work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm. For anything urgent, ring rather than use the form, and if we cannot pick up we ring you back as soon as we can.

Call now: 07435 839745

Rooms in the roof

Dormers and mansards in the rebuilt Georgian centre

After the fire of 1731 the centre was rebuilt in brick and tile, and many of the new houses had rooms in the roof lit by dormers. Some have a mansard, a steep lower slope under a shallow upper one, like the long brick range at 19 to 25 West Street with its three dormers. If the wet patch is in a top floor or attic room on a house like that, look at the dormer before the main slope. Water gets in at the lead apron below the window, at the cheeks either side, at the soakers where a cheek meets the tiles, or on a mansard at the kerb where the two pitches meet.

So the repair is lead and a little joinery at that one junction, not re-bedding tiles or stripping a slope. The lead goes back to the same detail and any tile or slate we disturb is matched. Turn down anyone who offers to wrap a dormer in felt or clad it in plastic. It changes how the building looks inside the conservation area, and on a listed house works affecting the character of a listed building need consent. The parish has 209 listed entries, so send us the address and we check it before we price.

Nearby, and next door

Roof repairs near Blandford Forum

Nearby places we also cover for roof repairs, with straight-line distances from Blandford Forum, and the other trades we offer in Blandford Forum itself.

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