Roof repairs in Corfe Castle

Roof repairs

One stone slate, one flashing, one leak

Rain already dripping through? Ring 07435 839745 and say where it shows: by the stack, along the party wall, or in the middle of a bedroom ceiling. That tells us a lot before anyone climbs a ladder.

A thin grey slate is lying on the pavement outside your front door on East Street. A brown tide mark has crept down the chimney breast in the back bedroom. Or the lead where your stone roof meets the slate roof next door has lifted, and you can see a gap from the garden.

We look from the street and the garden, go up where it is safe to, and check the underside from the loft. You get photographs of the fault, what it needs, and a written, itemised price for that repair and nothing else.

The repairs

Slipped stone, split lead and tired stacks

Most of the old street frontage here is roofed in Purbeck stone slate, with natural slate on some houses, a handful in clay tile, and some thatch. Each covering fails in its own way, and each gets repaired in its own way.

A stone slate that has slid. A Purbeck slate hangs on an oak peg or a nail over a batten. When the peg rots or the nail rusts through, the slate drops down the slope and leaves a gap in the lap above it. The stone itself is usually fine. We lift the slates above it, re-hang the same slate on a new fixing and lay the course back. Because the courses get smaller towards the ridge, a broken slate has to be replaced with one of the same size for its course, cut from matching reclaimed stone. No mastic, no foam and no glue: all three trap water and make the next repair harder.

Ridges on stone roofs. The ridge is stone or clay, bedded in mortar. After enough winters the bedding cracks, a ridge piece rocks, and water gets in along the top of the roof. We take off the loose pieces, clean them and rebed them. On a listed roof we match the existing mortar and detail, and we agree it first if the conservation officer needs to see it.

Natural slate with rusted nails. Where a house here is slated, the classic fault is nail sickness: the nails corrode and slates slip one after another. A few slipped slates get a tingle, a small strip of lead or copper hooked under the bottom edge. If slates are slipping all over one slope, the fixings are finished across it and that slope wants stripping and re-nailing. Replacement slate is matched to the old for size and thickness, and the A, T and S codes for natural slate tell you what you are being offered.

Where one covering meets another. Stone slate beside slate, or slate against a thatched neighbour, means valleys, soakers and abutment flashings. When lead splits or a mortar fillet cracks open, water runs straight down the wall inside. We cut the old fillet out and dress new lead in, with soakers under each course and a stepped flashing over them. A valley takes longer than a flashing, because the slates either side come up.

Brick stacks. The stone cottages here mostly have brick stacks, and the stack is the likeliest leak on the roof. Cracked flaunching round the pots, a back gutter full of debris, or lead that has pulled out of its joint all show up as damp on the chimney breast. We check all three before we touch anything. If the brickwork itself has gone, that is chimney repairs.

The south west side. The most exposed side faces south west, so driven rain works in at the verges, abutments and flashings on that side first. If your stain only appears after a wet south westerly, tell us, because it narrows the search.

What lifting a slate can show. Older roofs in the village may have no underlay at all. The underside was torched with lime mortar between the battens. A repair can uncover torching that has crumbled or battens gone soft. If so, you get a photograph and a separate price before we go further. A perished patch can be made good locally. A whole slope like that is a re-cover, and that is a job for our roofers in Corfe Castle.

Later houses. Some later houses in the village carry clay plain tile, slate or concrete interlocking tile. There it is the usual work: a cracked tile slid out and a matching one clipped in, or a loose ridge and verge fixed down to BS 5534.

Flat roofs at the back. Rear additions and outbuildings are felt, GRP or EPDM. They fail at blisters, at a split where the covering turns up the wall, and where water ponds by the outlet. A split over a dry, firm deck can be patched; a deck that gives underfoot cannot. More on flat roofing in Corfe Castle.

Thatch. We do not thatch. A thatched roof needs a specialist thatcher. We deal only with the stone, slate or tile roof, the lead and the stack on our side of a junction.

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.

Like for like is maintenance; a new covering is not. East Street, West Street and the Square sit in the Corfe Castle Conservation Area, but some later edge housing is outside it, so check Dorset Council's map. Well over a hundred buildings in and around the village are listed, so if yours is one of them, read Dorset Council's page on listed building consent before a single slate changes, and the Planning Portal guidance on roofs for anything else.

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 a stone roof that means a slipped slate set back or a weighted sheet over the gap. 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

Where your roof meets next door's

Most of the old houses on East Street and West Street are bays of a terrace, and the covering can change from one door to the next: stone slate, then slate, then thatch. Some brick stacks sit on the party line and serve two houses.

So a stain in your back bedroom may start at the joint with next door's roof or a stack you share. Tracing it can mean looking at their side too, so have a word with your neighbour before we come.

A leak at a shared stack is a shared repair: both sides need doing together, or the water simply moves across the party line. Work to a party structure can bring in the Party Wall etc. Act 1996. If next door is thatched, a thatcher works their side. On East Street, which is the A351, a front repair may need a platform on the footway, and that goes on the quote as access.

Nearby, and next door

Roof repairs near Corfe Castle

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

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