Roof repairs in Downton

Roof repairs

Mending the old tiles, the slate and the newer hips

If water is getting into the house now, ring 07435 839745 and say whether the roof above the drip is tiled, slated, flat or thatched.

A plain tile has dropped off a High Street cottage and lies snapped in the yard. After a week of heavy rain, a damp line creeps across the ceiling beside the chimney breast. Or a bungalow hip sheds mortar onto the path and the tile above it rattles in the wind.

We look at the slopes from the road and the garden, go up where a roof ladder is safe, and run a torch along the loft timbers. You get photographs, and the written quote names the fault and the fix. If a slope is past patching, we say so.

What we mend

The faults on Downton's clay, slate and concrete roofs

The village has three kinds of roof, and each gives way in its own place. The old centre along The Borough, High Street and Lode Hill carries handmade clay plain tile, some Welsh slate and plenty of thatch. The newer roads toward the Wick side are mostly bungalows and post-war semis under concrete tile. Both ages tend to have a flat roof at the back.

Snapped and slipped plain tiles. A handmade clay plain tile hangs on its batten by two small nibs, with a nail only every few courses. Once a nib breaks off or the nail rusts through, the tile slides and opens a gap two courses deep. We ease up the tiles above, hang a reclaimed handmade tile of the same colour and camber, and hook or nail it in. A dozen tiles is usually a morning from a roof ladder.

Dormer cheeks and the little valleys beside them. Rows such as Nos 36 to 44 High Street have gabled dormers set into the slope, and every dormer adds two small valleys and two cheeks. The valley at the dormer's foot fills with moss and splits, and the lead down the cheek lifts away. We take the tiles off either side, renew the lead or re-lay the valley tiles, and hang the slope back over it. Allow about a day for each dormer.

Bonnet hips, bedded ridges and coped gables. On the old clay roofs the ridge and any bonnet hip tiles sit in mortar, and the hipped and ornamental tiled roofs on Slab Lane carry plenty of it. Where a gable has a brick coping with kneelers, as at 99 to 101 The Borough, the weak point is the pointing where the tiles run up to the coping. We rake out and rebed in a lime mortar to suit the house, with reclaimed tiles for any cracked ones.

Welsh slate on the nineteenth-century fronts. Some houses on The Borough are slated, Wistaria at No 73 among them. Slate outlasts its nails. We draw a broken slate out with a slate ripper, slide in a matching reclaimed Welsh slate and hold its tail with a copper or lead tingle. Slates sliding all across one slope mean the nails have failed everywhere, and patching turns into stripping and re-nailing, which is whole-roof work for our roofers in Downton.

Brick stacks and their lead. The old centre is full of brick chimneys, and some, like the diagonally set stacks at 27 to 29 High Street, have more corners to flash than a square stack. A wet patch on a chimney breast after heavy rain points at the back gutter, the stepped flashing or the soakers under the tiles, or at open joints and cracked flaunching in the stack itself. We re-dress or renew the lead and repoint the chase it sits in. If the brickwork or the pots are at fault, that is chimney repairs.

Hips and verges on the post-war bungalows. A hipped bungalow has four hips coming down close to the gutters, all bedded in sand and cement when it was built. Decades of frost crack that bedding and the hip tiles work loose. We rebed each run with a screw or clip in every tile, or fit a dry hip and ridge system to BS 8612. Gable-ended semis lose verge mortar the same way; a dry verge replaces it. A bungalow's hips and ridge are around a day.

Perished felt and tired valleys on concrete roofs. Under the concrete interlocking tiles on the post-war houses is bitumen felt, and the strip over the fascia fails first. We lift the bottom courses, cut the felt back and fit an eaves carrier tray. Concrete tile of that age can still be sound, as BRE's testing of sixty year old roof tiles shows, so it is the felt and battens that decide repair or replace. Mortar-bedded valleys crack and get relaid in a dry valley trough. A rotten fascia or overflowing gutter is fascias, soffits and guttering work.

Flat roofs on the back. Felt over a rear extension, garage or porch splits at the upstand, blisters in the sun and ponds where the deck has sagged. A split over a dry, firm deck can be patched. A deck that gives underfoot needs re-covering, which flat roofing in Downton covers. Behind a thatched cottage the repair is always cold applied, for the reason set out further down.

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.

Wiltshire Council is the planning authority for Downton. Putting matching tile or slate back the same way on an unlisted house needs no application, and the Planning Portal guidance on roofs shows where that line sits. The Downton Conservation Area covers the old core and the village has over a hundred listed entries, and on a listed house works affecting the character of a listed building need consent, so tell us the address before we price.

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 house is thatched, tell us whether the drip sits under the straw or under the tiled or slated part at the back, because that decides which trade you need. 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

Thatched cottages

Behind the thatch: the wing that is ours to mend

The Borough is lined with listed thatched cottages, and several list entries record a later back part under another covering. Jasmine Cottage at 18 The Borough has a single-storey brick and tile extension behind it. No 18 Lode Hill has a Victorian extension under Welsh slate, and No 92 The Borough has a flat-roofed one. We do not thatch; the straw needs a specialist thatcher. But a drip in a thatched cottage can come from the tiled or slated wing, the lead where that wing meets the main wall below the thatch, the flashing round a brick stack, or the flat roof on the back. At the visit we tell you which, so you call the right trade.

Two things change on those jobs. No naked flame goes near the straw, so there is no torch-on felt: a flat roof behind a thatch is mended in EPDM rubber or a cold-applied liquid or GRP system, and the lead is dressed cold. And the listing takes in the attached wing as well as the cottage. Matching tile or Welsh slate put back the same way is repair, but a different covering, a dry-fix ridge in place of mortar, or a new rooflight can need listed building consent from Wiltshire Council first, as section 7 of the Listed Buildings Act sets out.

Nearby, and next door

Roof repairs near Downton

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

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