Roof repairs in Cranborne

Roof repairs

Find the leak on an old Cranborne roof, then mend it

If water is coming through a ceiling in Cranborne now, ring 07435 839745 and say which room it is in and which wall it is closest to.

A clay tile on the path after a wet, blowy night, with a pale gap in the slope above where it used to sit. A brown tide mark on a bedroom ceiling, hard up against the chimney breast. Damp creeping down the inside of a gable wall at the top of the stairs, when every tile looks fine from the garden.

Each has a cause on the roof. We go up where it is safe, check the underside from the loft hatch with a torch, and photograph what is wrong. If the roof is past repairing we say so, and that work sits with our roofers in Cranborne.

The repairs

Clay tile, brick stacks and old junctions: what fails and how we fix it

Plain clay tiles slipping or splitting. Many of the older tiled roofs in the village centre are small plain clay tile, hung on the battens by a nib or an oak peg, with only some courses nailed. When a peg rots, a nib snaps or a nail rusts through, the tile slides and opens the lap under it.

Frost also flakes the face off old clay or cracks a tile across. We ease up the tiles above, slide a sound plain tile into the gap and hold it with a hook or clip, as BS 5534 expects every tile to be mechanically fixed. A concrete interlocking tile will not sit in a plain tile roof, so the new one is clay. A few tiles take a morning from a roof ladder. On a slate roof the fault is nail sickness, and a lead tingle under the slate holds it back in place.

Leaks at the brick stacks. The older brick houses in the centre carry brick stacks at their ends, and a stack is the likeliest source of a leak. The flaunching round the pots cracks and lets rain into the brickwork. The stepped lead pulls out of its joint, the soakers split, and the back gutter behind a wide stack fills with leaves until it spills under the tiles. A stack above a gable loses its pointing to the weather, and the damp shows on the chimney breast upstairs. We repoint, rebuild the flaunching and re-dress or renew the lead. One stack is a day or so with a safe platform round it. More on chimney repairs.

Bonnet hips and ridge. The curved clay bonnet tiles on a hip, and the ridge along the top, sit on a bed of mortar. Once frost cracks it, a tile rocks until a gale lifts it. We take up the loose run, clean off the old bed and rebed each tile with a fixing through it, around a day for a cottage ridge or a pair of hips. A dry ridge or dry verge kit suits a concrete tile roof, but on old clay in the conservation area we keep to mortar.

Valleys and dormers. A laced or swept tile valley cracks along its line, and a lead valley splits at an old lap. Relaying one means lifting the tiles either side, one to two days. On a dormer, the small lead or felt roof, the cheeks and the flashing to the main slope all leak, and the stain shows in the room under the eaves.

No underfelt and tired battens. An old clay roof may have no underlay at all, just tiles, some mortar torching and the original battens, so once a tile slips nothing catches the rain. At least one house in the village was thatched before it was tiled. When the pegs have gone across a whole slope and a screwdriver sinks into the battens, the roof has little life left and patching only moves the leak. That is re-roofing work for our roofers in Cranborne.

Flat roofs and gutters. A split felt roof over a garage or extension is patched only on a dry, firm deck, covered under flat roofing in Cranborne. A gutter spilling onto a solid old wall can mimic a roof leak, and that is fascias, soffits and guttering in Cranborne work.

After a storm. Wind damage on these roofs is plain to see: a bonnet tile down, a row lifted along a verge, a pot off a stack. We sheet or refix what we can so the house is weathertight, and price the proper repair once it can be seen.

Thatch. There are still thatched cottages in Cranborne, and re-ridging or patching thatch is a job for a specialist thatcher, not for us. We can repair a brick stack rising through it, or a tiled roof butting up to it.

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.

At the first visit we check whether your Cranborne house is listed or in the conservation area. Putting back the same clay, lead and mortar is repair, but on a listed house anything that changes a material or the look of the roof needs listed building consent from Dorset Council first.

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 in your Cranborne house is against a gable wall or chimney breast, say so, as that points at the coping or the stack. 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

Gable ends

Where the tiles meet a brick gable

On Water Street and The Square there are houses whose tiled roofs stop at a raised brick gable, with a coping along the top, a kneeler at the foot and a brick stack at the end. The listing descriptions for houses on those two streets record exactly that.

The tiles do not run over the wall. They stop against it, and the joint is sealed with a cement fillet or lead. When the fillet cracks, the coping joints open or a kneeler shifts, rain runs down inside the parapet into the wall. The stain turns up against the gable wall or the chimney breast indoors, well away from any slipped tile, and changing a tile will not stop it.

So we open that junction up. The repair is lead soakers under each course of tiles with a stepped cover flashing chased into a brick joint, or the coping raked out, rebedded and repointed in lime mortar. Another bead of mastic or cement over the crack will not last. Cranborne has 25 listed entries, and on a listed house, or a gable facing the street in the conservation area, putting back what was there is maintenance. Changing how the junction looks, say with a new cement render fillet or with copings swapped for a plastic dry verge, is a question for Dorset Council before work starts, starting with their page on listed building consent.

Nearby, and next door

Roof repairs near Cranborne

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

Everything we do in Verwood Roof repairs, all areas Every area we cover