Roof repairs in Milford on Sea

Roof repairs

Mend the part that has failed

If water is dripping through a ceiling in Milford on Sea now, ring 07435 839745 and tell us which room it is in.

A ridge tile is lying on the drive after a south westerly, and the rest of the run shifts when you look up at it. The flat roof over the garage or the back extension has started dripping onto whatever is stored below. A damp patch is spreading across the bedroom ceiling of a top floor flat. A brown ring has come up in the corner of a cottage bedroom beside the chimney breast.

Each one has a cause we can put a finger on. We look at the roof from the ground and from a ladder, get into the loft where there is one, photograph what we find and write down the repair it needs. If mending it would be throwing money at a roof that has had its day, you hear that plainly, and whole-roof work sits with our roofers in Milford on Sea.

The repairs

Ridges, hips, flat roofs and the old clay tiles

Most houses in Milford on Sea are post-war, with the biggest share built in the seventies and early eighties. So your roof is most likely concrete interlocking tile on trussed rafters, bitumen felt under the battens, and a ridge, hips and verges bedded in sand and cement. About a quarter of homes are flats, which brings flat roofs on the blocks and their garages. The old centre is different again: clay plain tile and natural slate.

Ridge and hip tiles that rock. The mortar under them shrinks and cracks, rain washes the loose grit into the gutter, and the next gale off the sea lifts the tile. We take off the loose run, clean the tiles and set them back in fresh mortar with a mechanical fixing through each one, or onto a dry ridge and hip system with nothing to wash out, since BS 5534 expects them fixed either way. A bungalow's four hips and short ridge were all bedded at the same time, so when one cracks, check the other three while the ladder is up. A ridge run is about a day.

Verge tiles dropping off a gable. The mortar strip under the end tiles falls away in lumps, and then the tiles follow. We rebed them with a fixing into every tile, or fit dry verge units that clip over the edge and leave no mortar to lose.

Slipped or lifted interlocking tiles. The side lock only keeps rain out while each tile sits snug against its neighbour. One lifted tile on the seaward slope lets driven rain straight onto the felt. We lift the courses above, slide in a tile of the same profile and clip it down to the batten. Some seventies profiles are no longer made, so a match can mean a reclaimed tile, or borrowing one from a slope nobody sees.

Felt gone at the eaves. Old bitumen felt perishes first where it dips into the gutter. Once it tears, water runs behind the fascia onto the wall plate, and the stain turns up at the top of an outside wall upstairs. We lift the bottom courses, cut out the dead strip, fit an eaves carrier tray, lap new breathable membrane over it and swap any soft batten. If the felt tears at a touch right up to the ridge, a strip at the bottom will not cure it, and the honest answer is a new roof.

Flat roofs on garages, extensions, dormers and blocks. Felt blisters and splits, GRP fibreglass cracks along its trims, and EPDM rubber lifts at a seam. Water ponds round a blocked outlet, wind peels back the drip edge, and the upstand flashing against the wall pulls away. Where the deck under a split is still firm and dry, a patch is a few hours' work. If the boards give underfoot, they have soaked up water and the covering has to come off. More on flat roofing in Milford on Sea.

Clay plain tile and slate in the old centre. Handmade clay tiles flake and split after frost, and the pegs or nails holding them rot or rust, so tiles slide out one at a time. On natural slate, a line of slates slipping together is nail sickness. A single slate goes back on a copper or lead tingle. A whole slope doing it wants stripping and nailing again.

Chimneys, lead and valleys. A stain beside a chimney breast usually starts at the stack: cracked flaunching round the pots, a stepped flashing pulled out of its joint, a split back gutter or an open pot letting rain straight down the flue. Soakers down a dormer cheek and lead valley linings split with age too. We renew them in rolled lead, cut in lengths short enough to move with the heat, and we will not smear mastic over a split. More on chimney repairs.

Gutters that pass for a roof leak. A gutter full of moss or a downpipe parted at a joint can put water down the inside of a wall. That side of things is on the fascias, soffits and guttering in Milford on Sea page.

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.

Milford on Sea sits outside the National Park, and the National Park Authority's interactive property map shows which side of the line any address falls, so New Forest District Council handles planning and building control here. Putting back the tile or slate a roof already has counts as repair, and the Planning Portal guidance on roofs sets out where that line sits. Inside the conservation area, changing how a roof looks may need the council's view first, and on a listed building anything that affects its character needs listed building consent under section 7 of the 1990 Act.

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 which room is wet and whether the wind was in the south west, because on a Milford on Sea roof that points us first at the seaward verge, hip and ridge. 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

The village centre

Old clay, slate and thatch around The Green

The Milford-on-Sea Conservation Area takes in the old centre around The Green, the High Street and the Church of All Saints, and 24 listed buildings sit inside it.

Their roofs are mostly handmade clay plain tile, with natural slate on some, among them most of the early nineteenth century terrace on the High Street. New handmade tile will not match a roof that has weathered for a century or two, so we repair a few courses in reclaimed tile of the same size, colour and camber, fixed the way the originals were. Swapping a slipped run for concrete interlocking tile, or putting a dry ridge where a bedded one was, changes how the roof looks, and New Forest District Council may want to see that first. On a listed building it needs listed building consent.

So before anything beyond a straight like for like repair, find out whether your house is in the conservation area or listed. We check that before we quote. Two cottages here are thatched, Milford Cottage on The Green among them, and a thatched roof needs a specialist thatcher, which we are not.

Nearby, and next door

Roof repairs near Milford on Sea

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