Roof repairs in Breamore

Roof repairs

Where the water gets in, and what stops it

If water is coming in now, ring 07435 839745. It helps us to know which part of the house is wet: the main roof, a lean-to or catslide at the back, or the room beside the chimney.

You might be ringing because a tile has dropped off the end of a half-hip and broken on the path. Or a brown ring has turned up on a bedroom ceiling after a wet week, right under the point where a back roof meets the main one. Or the chimney breast upstairs goes dark every time the rain drives in from the west.

Each has one cause somewhere above it. We look from outside and from the loft, photograph what we find, and tell you what the repair is and whether the rest of that slope is sound.

What we repair

Slipped tiles, tired lead and the lean-to at the back

Going by their Historic England entries, the listed cottages in Breamore are brick, or timber frame with brick infill, under thatch, clay plain tile or slate. We repair the tile and the slate, the lead that seals them to walls and chimneys, and the flat roofs added later.

Clay plain tiles. A plain tile hangs on two small nibs and, every few courses, a nail. When the nibs crumble or the nails rust away, the tile slides down. A slipped, cracked or missing tile is replaced with a matching one, held by a tile clip or hook where it cannot be nailed. The hard part is the match. The listing for Virginia Cottage on School Lane describes a tile roof with scalloped bands, and shaped tiles like those only come back from reclaimed stock of the same pattern and size. A few tiles is usually a morning from a roof ladder.

Tile-hanging on upper walls. Some cottages carry clay tiles on the wall as well as the roof, the listing for The Old Dairy Cottage on Salisbury Road among them. A hung tile that drops lets rain onto the wall behind it, and the damp shows inside before you notice the gap. We refix the course and check the flashing where the hanging stops over a window.

Hips and half-hips. A half-hipped end has a short hip on each side, and those hip tiles are bedded in mortar. Once the bedding cracks, wind rocks them loose from the bottom up. We lift the loose run, keep every tile that will go back, check the hip iron at the foot, and rebed with a mechanical fixing to each tile, which BS 5534 now expects. Ridges and verges get the same treatment.

Abutments and cement fillets. Where a roof slope runs up against a gable wall or a chimney, the joint should be lead soakers under each course with a stepped flashing over them. Plenty of old roofs have a sand and cement fillet there instead. It shrinks away from the brick and water runs in behind it. We cut the fillet out and dress lead in its place.

Slate on forges, stores and lean-tos. Slate is fixed with two nails, and when those rust through a slate slips. One or two go back on a tingle, a strip of lead or copper hooked under the tail. That is a fair repair on a sound slope. If slates are slipping from the same course along the whole roof, a tingle only buys time, and we would tell you so.

Valleys and dormer cheeks. A lead valley splits where it was laid in too long a length, or silts up until water backs over its edge. A tiled dormer leaks at its cheeks, where the soakers meet the slope. We clear a valley before condemning it.

Chimneys. Loose flaunching on top of the stack, a lifted flashing or a split back gutter behind it all show up as a wet chimney breast. That work is covered on our chimney repairs page.

Flat roofs on extensions and dormers. Felt splits and blisters, GRP cracks at its trims, EPDM lifts at an upstand. A split on a firm deck is patched in a few hours; a deck that gives underfoot means the covering comes off. See flat roofing in Breamore.

Gutters and downpipes. An overflowing gutter soaks the brick below and can look like a roof leak from inside. Rotten fascias and cracked downpipes are fascias, soffits and guttering work.

After a storm. We sheet the gap left by a gale as a temporary cover and come back with matched material. More on emergency roof repairs.

Repair or replace. A repair is honest while the battens are firm and the underlay, if there is any, still works. On a concrete interlocking tile roof with sound tiles, the fixings and the ridge are usually the fault. Once the battens are soft or fixings are failing across a whole slope, patching stops paying, and the re-cover is a job for our roofers in Breamore. How we put a figure on either is set out in how we price a job.

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.

Most leak repairs in Breamore count as maintenance. The village has had its own conservation area since 2000 and the parish has more than sixty listed entries, so if your house is listed, ask New Forest District Council before any change of material, and use the National Park Authority's interactive property map to see which authority covers an address near the Park boundary.

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. If the wet patch is in a room under a thatched roof, say so, because the first question is whether the water is coming through the thatch or past the lead beside it. 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

Mixed roofs

Thatch on the front, tile on the back: whose leak is it?

The Historic England listing for Willow Cottages on The Marsh describes a thatched roof with a tiled catslide at the rear. The entry for Old Forge Cottage on Salisbury Road has a slate roof to the forge beside the thatch. So in Breamore thatch and tile or slate can meet on the same building, and a stain under that meeting point has three possible sources: the thatch, the tiled or slated slope, or the lead and mortar where the two join.

That decides who you need, so settle it before you book anyone. Straw is a thatcher's job, not ours: we do not thatch. What we do is look at the junction from outside and from the roof space, check the flashing and any fillet, and test the tiled side with water where it is safe to. If the fault is on our side, the junction is remade cold, with lead dressed by hand or a lime fillet, and no torch is lit anywhere on the roof. If it is the thatch, we tell you plainly and give you the photographs to show your thatcher.

Nearby, and next door

Roof repairs near Breamore

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

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