Roof repairs in Boldre

Roof repairs

Mending the roof that is already on your house

Water dripping into a room as you read this? Ring 07435 839745 and say which room, and roughly where on the ceiling.

Here is what tends to make people pick up the phone. A grey slate lying in the flowerbed after a blow from the south west. A damp line on the back bedroom ceiling, under the long slope that sweeps down the rear of the house. A brown streak creeping down the chimney breast upstairs. A drip inside the garage every time it rains hard.

We look at the slopes from the lane and the garden, go up where a roof ladder can be used safely, and check the timbers from the loft hatch. You see photographs of the fault and get a written quote for mending it. If the roof is past mending, we tell you that too.

The repairs

Slipped slates, loose plain tiles and a leaking stack

The older houses around Pilley Street, Pilley Bailey and Rope Hill are brick under natural slate or clay plain tile, and the twentieth century houses north of the crossroads and in Bull Hill are mostly concrete tile. Each of those fails in its own way, and each is mended differently.

Nail sickness on slate. A slate hangs on two nails. When those nails rust through, the slate slides down and opens a gap in the course above. For a few slates we fit a matching natural slate, same size, thickness and colour, and hold it with a tingle: a strip of lead or copper nailed to the batten and folded up under the tail. A slope where one slate has been held on a tingle and hook after another is telling you the nails have gone across the whole slope.

Slates that flake. Soft or poor slate splits into layers and the face peels off, and water then soaks through the thinned slate. We swap the failing ones for reclaimed or new natural slate that matches, and check the batten under each one while the gap is open.

The rear catslide. A long slated slope running down from the ridge nearly to ground floor height carries more water past its lower courses than any other slope on the house. Slipped slates near the bottom, a cement fillet cracked where the slope meets a side wall, and a soft batten at the eaves all show up as damp on the back rooms. Where the cement fillet has split, we cut it out and put lead soakers and a stepped flashing in its place.

Clay plain tiles. A plain tile hangs on the batten by two small nibs. When a nib snaps, or frost flakes the face off an old tile, it slips. We slide in a salvaged handmade tile of the same size and colour and hang it on a hook where it cannot be nailed. Bedded or bonnet hips and old ridge tiles come loose as their mortar goes, and we rebed them with a fixing into each one so the next gale cannot lift them. A few tiles is a morning; a hip is about a day.

Valleys. A laced or swept clay valley, or a lead one, carries two slopes of water into one line. Leaves from the trees along the lanes pile up in it and water backs up under the tiles either side. Clearing a blocked valley is sometimes the whole repair. A split lead valley means lifting the tiles either side and relaying it, one or two days. See fascias, soffits and guttering for the gutters below.

Chimneys. A tall brick stack is the likeliest leak on an old Boldre house. The stepped flashing pulls out of its joints, the soakers under the tiles split, the flaunching round the pots cracks and rain soaks down through open joints in the brickwork. You see it as a stain on the chimney breast or beside it. We renew the lead, repoint the joints and rebed the flaunching around the pots already there. More on chimney repairs.

Thatch. The cob and thatch cottages in Pilley and Bull Hill need a specialist thatcher, and we do not thatch. What we can mend beside one is a tiled or slated extension, chimney lead, and the flashing where a tiled roof meets the thatch.

Twentieth century houses and bungalows. Concrete interlocking tile with mortar bedded hips and ridges. The mortar cracks, and the edge tiles on the south west side lift first in a gale. We refix them with clips, and rebed or dry fix the hips and ridge to BS 5534.

Flat roofs. Garages, porches and rear extensions in felt, GRP or EPDM fail at a split, a pond of standing water, or the upstand where the roof meets the wall. A split over a firm, dry deck can be patched in a few hours. A deck that gives underfoot has taken in water and will not hold a patch. See flat roofing in Boldre.

When mending stops making sense. Slates sliding all over a slope, felt that crumbles wherever a tile is lifted, and battens soft enough to push a screwdriver into mean the next repair will not be the last one. That becomes a job for our roofers in Boldre, and the quote can price the repair and the re-cover side by side.

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.

Planning here sits with the New Forest National Park Authority. Mending a slope in the slate or tile it already has is maintenance under the Planning Portal guidance on roofs, so an unlisted house needs no application for it.

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. On an older Boldre house, tell us whether the wet is beside the chimney breast or under the back slope, because that tells us whether to bring lead or slate. 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

Worth knowing

Pilley's slate and clay: match it, keep the chimney

Most of Boldre, Pilley and Bull Hill sits inside the Forest South East Conservation Area. Its appraisal notes clay plain tile on the eighteenth century houses and natural slate from the mid nineteenth century, when the railway brought it in. Pilley Street shows both, with brick and slate cottages beside cob and thatch ones, and Gilpins Cottage, the listed former school at the School Lane corner, is brick under plain tile. The Authority discourages concrete tiles on these roofs because their heavy profile stands out, and asks for chimney stacks and their pots to stay, down to the old Fareham pots.

So a cracked plain tile or a slipped slate gets a matching clay tile or natural slate, never a concrete one pushed in to fill the gap. On a catslide with a patch of slipped slates, we strip the worst section, set the sound slates aside and lay them back on new battens. A leaking stack gets new lead, repointing and fresh flaunching, not taken down below the roofline. A change of material, or losing a stack, is what the Authority looks at, and a listed house needs consent even for small changes. Check your address on the National Park Authority's interactive property map and read the National Park heritage and conservation guidance.

Nearby, and next door

Roof repairs near Boldre

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