Roof repairs in East Boldre

Roof repairs

One fault, found and mended

Rain getting into a room as you read this? Ring 07435 839745 and say where on the ceiling it shows.

Perhaps a slate has slid onto the gutter of a brick cottage facing the Forest. Perhaps a brown ring has appeared on a back bedroom ceiling, on the side facing the old oak bank. Or the garage drips whenever it rains hard.

Thomas looks at each slope from the road and the garden, goes up where a roof ladder sits safely, and checks the underside from the loft. You get photographs of the fault and a written price for mending it, or the reasons if the roof is past mending.

What gets mended

Slate, cob and clay tile along one road

East Boldre is one long line of houses on the forest edge, and the conservation area appraisal describes its roofs by period: cob and thatch first, brick and slate in the gaps, then twentieth century infill. Each fails in its own way.

Slipped and cracked slate on the brick cottages. The houses built in the gaps between the older plots in the nineteenth century are mainly brick under natural slate, Massey's on Massey's Lane and the painted brick cottages where that lane meets East Boldre Road among them. When a nail that old rusts through, the slate drops and opens a joint in the course above. We slide in a natural slate of the same size and thickness and hold its tail with a copper tingle or a stainless hook, and a cracked slate at the eaves or verge is swapped the same way. A few slates is a morning.

When the tingles have run out. A strip of copper every few courses, with more slates sliding each winter, means nail sickness across the slope. Then we strip a section, keep every sound slate, and hang it back on new battens with copper nails, topped up with matched second hand slate. Putting the old slate back is what keeps the work a like for like repair in the conservation area.

Ridges and hips bedded in mortar. Once the bedding under a ridge tile cracks, the tile rocks and rain runs in beneath it. We lift the loose ones and set them back with a mechanical fixing into each, as BS 5534 expects. East Boldre House on Cripplegate Lane has a decorative ridge, and a crested ridge like that is refixed, never swapped for a plain one. A run of ridge is about a day.

Lead at the chimney and in the valleys. A brick stack on a slate roof has lead soakers up each side, a stepped flashing over them, and a back gutter behind it where water from the slope above gathers. That back gutter is the usual culprit. It silts up, splits at a fold, and water runs down inside the chimney breast. We lift the slates beside it, renew the lead in short lengths so it can move with the heat, and dress it back under. A split lead valley takes a day or two to relay. If the brickwork or the flaunching round the pots is the real fault, that is chimney repairs.

Old plain clay tile. One or two of the older buildings, Cripplegate Farmhouse among them, are brick under old plain clay tile with big stacks. A plain tile hangs by two nibs, and after two centuries of frost a nib snaps or the face laminates. We replace failed ones with salvaged handmade tiles matched for size, camber and colour, hung on a hook.

The cob and thatch cottages. The oldest cottages in the village are cob under thatch, standing gable end to the road. Their thatch is a job for a specialist thatcher, and we are not thatchers. On one of these houses we can mend a tiled or slated lean-to at the back, the lead round a chimney where it passes through that tiled part, and the gutter and downpipe below it. Treat a leaking gutter on a cob cottage as urgent. Cob kept wet at the foot goes soft, so the water must be carried well clear.

The newer houses. A broken concrete interlocking tile is swapped for one of the same profile and clipped down; cracked mortar verge is rebedded or given a dry verge.

Felt over garages and extensions. Felt splits along a lap or pulls away at the upstand against the house wall. A sound, dry deck takes a patch in a few hours; one that flexes underfoot has been wet too long to hold one. See flat roofing in East Boldre, and for boards and gutters, fascias, soffits and guttering in East Boldre.

After a storm. Where it is safe, the first visit sheets the gap or refixes the course, then you get a written price for the permanent repair, and dated photographs if you are claiming on insurance.

When the roof has had its life. Felt that turns to dust when a slate is lifted, battens that snap, and slates flaking on every slope mean a repair buys a season at most. That is a re-cover for our roofers in East Boldre, and the quote can set repair and re-roof 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 in East Boldre sits with the New Forest National Park Authority. The historic line of the village, along East Boldre Road and the old plots, is inside its Forest South East Conservation Area; the newer estates off Chapel Avenue, east of the Beaulieu Rails, are not. Mending a roof in the slate or tile it already has is maintenance and needs no application; changing the covering is not. A listed cottage is different, because works affecting the character of a listed building need consent and a repair can fall under that, so check your own address on the National Park Authority's interactive property map and read the National Park heritage and conservation guidance before anything is booked.

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. Say whether the house is slate, tile or part thatch, and which side of the house the water shows on, so the right lead and slate come out with us. 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

The oak bank behind the old plots

The older plots along East Boldre Road are long and narrow, and their back boundary is the Beaulieu Rails, the medieval edge of the Beaulieu manor. Once a bank and ditch, it is now marked mostly by mature oak and hedgerow.

So on an old cottage the rear slope, the valley behind the stack and the back gutter all sit under oak. They stay shaded and damp and catch the twigs, acorns and moss the front never sees. Broomhills Farmhouse, its slate running into a full length catslide at the back, shows how much roof can face that way.

That changes where the search for a leak starts. A stain on a back ceiling in one of these houses is traced from the rear valley, the chimney back gutter and the eaves before anyone blames the slates or talks about a new rear slope. The cure may be a cleared and relined valley, refixed eaves slates and a bigger outlet, a far smaller job.

Carry the rainwater from that back gutter well clear of the rear wall and its footings. The modern houses off Chapel Avenue sit east of the bank, so this is about the old plots. Ask the National Park Authority before cutting anything back in the conservation area.

Nearby, and next door

Roof repairs near East Boldre

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

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