Roof repairs in Furzehill

Roof repairs

One fault, found and put right

If water is coming through a ceiling now, ring 07435 839745 and say which room it is dripping into.

The warning signs here tend to be small. A bungalow hip tile sitting a finger's width proud. Grey mortar crumbs on the gravel under a gable end. A damp line on the ceiling behind the integral garage. A plastic verge cap on the lawn of a house only a few years old.

We look from the ground, go up where it is safe and check the underside from the loft hatch. You get photographs and a written, itemised price for that one fault. If a whole slope has had its day, that is a job for our roofers in Furzehill.

The repairs

Where a Furzehill roof lets water in

Three kinds of roof sit around Furzehill, and each fails in its own places: bungalows and detached houses from the fifties to the early eighties, a large estate built since 2018 on the Wimborne side, and older cottages and farmhouses in clay and slate.

Hips on the post-war bungalows. About a quarter of the homes here are bungalows, and a hipped bungalow has four long hip runs climbing to a short ridge, every tile sat in sand and cement. After forty-odd winters that bedding shrinks away from the tile, cracks along its length and lets a hip tile rock in the wind. We lift the loose run, knock off the old mortar and either rebed it with a screw or clip through each tile or change it to a dry hip on a vented roll. BS 5534 expects ridge and hip tiles to be mechanically fixed whichever way it is done. Bungalow eaves are low, so a tower on the drive reaches most hips, and a full run is about a day.

A single cracked interlocking tile. A concrete interlocking tile cracks when a foot goes on it to reach an aerial or a satellite dish, or lifts in a gale where it was only hung on its nibs. Water then runs in under the side lock and onto the felt. We ease up the tile above, fit one of the same profile and clip it down, an hour or two once we are up. A profile no longer made means a reclaimed tile.

Mortar verges on the gable ends. The detached houses with gables carry mortar verges over a strip of undercloak, and the mortar comes off in slabs, often on the weather side first. Over a sound undercloak we repoint it. Where it keeps failing, a clip-on dry verge to BS 8612 leaves no mortar to drop, and both gable ends of a detached house take about a day.

Felt split where it meets the gutter. Under those tiles is the original bitumen felt, and the strip that dips into the gutter has sat in daylight for decades. It splits, and rain running down the felt drops behind the gutter and down the wall. We take up the bottom courses, cut back the perished felt, fit an eaves carrier tray and lap new membrane over it. If the board behind has gone soft, fascias, soffits and guttering in Furzehill can be done on the same visit.

Valleys and cement fillets. Where a garage or a back extension joins the main roof at an angle there is a valley, either mortar-bedded valley tiles or a trough that fills with moss and oak leaves. The mortar cracks or the trough silts up, and a downpour backs over the edge. Where a lean-to or stack meets brick, a cement fillet often stands in for lead, and it cracks away from the wall. We relay the valley, or cut out the fillet and fit stepped lead flashing with soakers under the tiles. Allow a day for a flashing and up to two for a valley. Leaks around a stack are covered under chimney repairs.

Felt over the garage and extension. Integral garages and back extensions from those decades carry felt flat roofs that split, blister and peel off the upstand against the house wall. A split over a dry, firm deck can be patched or overlaid in a few hours. A deck that gives underfoot has soaked up water, and nothing will bond to it. More on flat roofing in Furzehill.

The newer houses. The estate built since 2018 has modern concrete tiles on breathable membrane, dry-fixed ridges with plastic unions, clip-on verge caps and vent tiles where the soil pipes come through. The weak points are the plastic parts and the joins: a loose cap or union, an unclipped tile, an unsealed pipe collar, the flashing where a porch canopy meets the wall. Read the section further down before paying anyone for those.

Cottages and farmhouses in the lanes. The older buildings carry clay plain tiles or natural slate on battens, often with nothing under them at all. A slate that slips because its nail has rusted through gets a lead or copper tingle. When slates are sliding right across a slope, that is nail sickness, and the slope wants stripping and re-nailing. A perished clay tile gets a reclaimed match, and a lime-bedded ridge goes back in lime, since hard cement cracks old clay.

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.

No conservation area covers Furzehill itself. The Burts Hill and Merrifield conservation area in Colehill starts about half a kilometre away, so on that side check your address first. The Planning Portal guidance explains why a like-for-like repair needs no application. Fourteen buildings in and around Furzehill are listed, and on one of those a repair that changes the material or takes out old fabric can need Dorset Council's listed building consent.

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. When you ring about a Furzehill roof, say whether it is a bungalow, a newer house or an older cottage, and which ceiling is wet. 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

New houses

Built since 2018? Check who owns the fault first

About a quarter of the homes counted around Furzehill have gone up since 2018, most of them on the newer estate between Furzehill and Wimborne. On a roof that young, ask who pays before asking how. Before anyone is paid to refix a verge cap, a ridge union that let go in a gale, a leak at a soil pipe or vent tile, or a wet patch under a valley, find the new-home warranty paperwork from when you bought. Then report the fault in writing to the builder or the warranty provider. A defect in a roof's early years may well be theirs to put right, and a repair by somebody else before they have seen it can muddy that.

What we can give you is a free site visit and dated photographs of what has failed and why, written up to send them. If water is actually coming in, we photograph the fault before touching it and make only that part watertight, so the evidence survives. We do not deal with the builder or provider for you, or say what they will accept. Once that route is closed, or your house is past it, we price the repair like any other.

Nearby, and next door

Roof repairs near Furzehill

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

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