Roof repairs in Kinson

Roof repairs in BH10

Find where it gets in, then mend that spot

If water is getting into your Kinson home now, ring 07435 839745 and say which room it is showing in.

Any of these is worth a look. A drip on the landing that only turns up when the rain is driving sideways. A damp patch on the chimney breast in a back bedroom, where the fireplace was boarded over long ago. Water creeping down the inside of the kitchen extension wall, right where it meets the old house. A bucket under the loft hatch that fills in a downpour.

Each points to a different part of the roof, and none means you need a new one. We look from outside, go up where it is safe, and check the felt from the loft. You see photographs of the fault before anything is agreed, and the quote covers that fault.

The repairs

The leaks a post-war Kinson roof springs, and how each is fixed

Kinson is mostly post-war semis and bungalows, with some inter-war houses, later infill and a fair number of flats, and very few older homes. Roofs of that age were usually concrete tile over bitumen felt, with the ridges and hips bedded in sand and cement.

Tracing it first. Water that gets past a tile runs down the felt or along a batten before it drops, so the mark inside sits lower on the slope than the cause. We inspect the high points first: the chimney, any valley, the hips and the ridge, then the edges. In the loft, in daylight, we look for tide marks on the felt, a wet rafter or a pinprick of sky. A drip on a cold, dry morning is condensation, which is a ventilation job.

The chimney on a semi. A post-war semi usually has a stack, and on plenty of them nobody has lit a fire for years. It still lets water in. The flaunching on top cracks, the cement fillet run down the side in place of lead shrinks off the brick, and the soakers under the tiles split. You see it as a damp chimney breast upstairs. The fix is new lead: soakers under each tile course, stepped flashing into cut joints, a back gutter on the uphill side, and fresh flaunching round the pots. A redundant stack can be capped, but it must keep a vent or the flue sweats and the damp stays. More on chimney repairs.

Where the extension meets the house. A kitchen extension, lean-to porch or later back room joins the original wall, and that join is where water runs down the inside. The lead is short, was never chased into the brick, or has become a cement fillet or a bead of mastic. We cut a proper chase, dress new lead over the upstand and repoint. Where a pitched extension roof ties into the main slope, the valley between them is lined in lead or GRP and is relaid with the tiles each side lifted, a day or two of work.

Felt gone at the eaves. The bottom strip of bitumen felt, where it laps into the gutter, turns brittle in the sun and snaps off. Water then drops behind the gutter and rots the fascia and rafter feet. We lift the bottom courses, cut out the perished strip, let in new membrane lapped under the old felt, fit an eaves tray and renew the bottom batten if it is soft. Rotten boards behind the gutter are fascias, soffits and guttering in Kinson.

Slipped and cracked concrete tiles. An interlocking tile hangs on its nibs and a nail or clip. When the nail rusts or the batten goes soft, it slides and opens the side lock. The hard part is the match, because interlocking profiles from different makers and decades do not lock into one another, and some are no longer made. We find the same profile, from a reclamation yard if need be, and clip it and its neighbours to BS 5534.

Felt on garages, porches and bay tops. Splits, blisters, an upstand peeled off the wall, an outlet choked with moss. Press the deck from inside. If the boards are dry and firm, a patch or a new upstand will hold, and BS 6229 sets how flexible coverings are laid. If they sag or are black with damp, the roof wants stripping and relaying. More on flat roofing in Kinson.

After a storm. Kinson is inland on the side of the Stour valley, so the harm here is wind: tiles lifted along a verge, a hip tile gone, an aerial bracket wrenched off the stack. First we make it weathertight, with a temporary sheet battened down if the permanent repair has to wait. Photograph everything for your insurer, because the three questions the Financial Ombudsman asks about a storm claim and the ombudsman on gradual damage both turn on what the roof was like before. See emergency roof repairs.

Repair or re-cover. While the felt is whole, a roof like this can be patched for a long time. When it tears in your fingers across the slope, the battens split as a nail goes in, or each patch moves the leak along, it has little life left. That is a re-cover, and our roofers in Kinson page deals with it. Where it is close, we price both. A thatched roof needs a specialist thatcher, which we are not.

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 Kinson (the council keeps the list), so a like-for-like repair to a house here is maintenance and needs no application to BCP Council. The exception is one of the handful of listed buildings, St Andrew's Church among them, where anything beyond like for like needs consent (the council's listed building records).

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 you are in a bungalow and can reach the loft safely, a torch on the underside of the felt shows whether the wet is coming off a hip, the stack or a valley, and tells us where to start. 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

Top-floor flats

Water through a flat ceiling starts with the lease

A fair share of homes in Kinson are flats. If you own the top one and water comes through your ceiling, the roof above it is very rarely yours to repair. Most leases put the roof, gutters and structure on the freeholder or a management company, paid through the service charge. If you rent, it is plainer still: a landlord must keep the structure and exterior in repair, including gutters.

So the first move is in writing. Email the freeholder or managing agent with the date, the room and photographs, and keep a copy. With their agreement we can look and write an itemised quote they can act on. For a bigger repair paid through the service charge, the freeholder has to consult every leaseholder first, under section 20 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985. That covers the permanent repair. Stopping the water with a temporary cover is a small separate job and need not wait.

Two traps. A flat roof over a shared entrance, or a valley draining your half of the roof and your neighbour's, is one repair, and fixing your side alone leaves the other leaking into the same spot. And flats fall outside the rules on permitted development for a dwellinghouse, so anything beyond like for like, such as a new roof window or a different covering, may need an application to BCP Council.

Nearby, and next door

Roof repairs near Kinson

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

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