Roof repairs in Minstead

Roof repairs

One fault, found and mended in Minstead

If water is coming into a room now, ring 07435 839745 and say which room and which side of the house it is showing on.

It usually starts with something you can see. A grey slate face down on the garden path. Red tile in the gutter after a gale through the trees. A damp patch on the chimney breast that only shows in driving rain.

None of those means a new roof. We look from the lane, the loft and a roof ladder where that is safe, photograph the fault and price it on its own. If a whole slope has no life left in it, that is a re-roof, work for our roofers in Minstead, and we will say so plainly.

The repairs

Slates, old plain tiles and what lets them down

The conservation area appraisal for this part of the Forest names slate as the main roofing material, with plain clay tile on older buildings and thatch on the earliest cob and timber cottages. Each fails in its own way.

A slate that has slid. A slate hangs on two nails. When they rust through, it drops out of its course and leaves a dark slot you can spot from the road, or a missing tile shape where it has fallen clean off. The broken stub comes out with a slate ripper, and a slate of the same size and thickness goes in on a copper clip or a lead tingle. When slates are sliding all over the front slope, that is nail sickness across the roof, and a tingle on every slate is just a patchwork of metal tabs. That slope wants stripping and re-nailing, and we would say so before selling you forty clips.

Decorative ridge on the slate roofs. The slate roofs here go with patterned clay ridge tiles and fretted barge boards, a large part of how the village looks. When the mortar bedding under a ridge or hip tile breaks up, the tile rocks in the wind, cracks, and lets rain in along the apex. We lift the loose lengths whole, scrape them clean and bed them back with a screw or clip through each one, which is what BS 5534 asks for. A broken length is matched from reclaimed stock, never swapped for a plain half round.

Verges at the gable. At the gable the slates finish on a pointed mortar edge, often tight behind a barge board. Once that mortar falls out, wind gets under the edge slates and lifts them. On a period gable we repoint the verge and refix the slates, because a plastic dry verge would look wrong there, and check the board behind for soft timber.

Plain clay tiles that slip or flake. An old plain tile hangs from its batten by two small nibs, or on the oldest roofs by a wooden peg. Snap a nib or rot a peg and the tile slides out of its course. Frost lifts the face off a soft old tile in flakes until water gets through. The fix is a tile of the same size, camber and colour, which usually means reclaimed tile, hung on a stainless tile hook. A concrete tile is too thick to lie in a clay course at all.

Tiles hung on a gable wall. Some older houses here hang plain tile down a gable as well; The Old Cottage is one. Hanging tiles are held by nails alone, so when the nails go they drop one at a time and the wall takes the weather. We rehang them from a tower in matching tile.

Mortar fillets and lead at walls and stacks. Where a roof meets a taller wall, lead should carry the water past the joint: soakers under each tile or slate and a stepped flashing over them. Older cottages were sometimes finished with a cement fillet instead, which cracks and lets water track down inside the wall. We cut it out and fit rolled lead in short pieces so heat can move it without tearing. Mastic over a cracked fillet lasts a season.

Concrete tiles on later roofs. The newer houses, and older roofs re-covered in concrete at some point, carry concrete interlocking tile. There the faults are mortar ridge and verge cracking and dropping into the gutter, and a broken tile or one nudged out of its interlock by wind. We refit a dry ridge and dry verge to BS 8612 and relock or clip the stray tile.

Flat roofs over garages, porches and extensions. Felt, GRP fibreglass and EPDM rubber tops split, blister and lift at the upstand against the house, and under trees the outlet fills with leaves so water stands and finds the weak seam. A split over a firm, dry deck is patched in a few hours. If the deck gives underfoot it will not hold a patch and wants re-covering; see flat roofing in Minstead.

Cast iron gutters and hoppers. A cracked joint in an old cast iron gutter, or a hopper head packed with leaf, sends water down the wall, where it shows as damp inside and gets blamed on the roof. Clearing and resealing can be the whole repair; see guttering in Minstead.

Thatch. A thatched roof needs a specialist thatcher, as we do not thatch, though the lead where a tiled extension or a chimney meets the thatch is work we can look at.

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.

Minstead is inside both the National Park and the Forest Central (South) Conservation Area, so we look your address up on the National Park Authority's interactive property map before we price. Putting back a slate or tile to match is maintenance; changing the covering or the ridge is for the Authority to agree first.

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 a branch is on the roof after a storm, leave it, keep out of the room below, photograph it for your insurance, and tell us which slope it is on; a temporary sheet keeps the rain out until the repair. 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

A leaking chimney here gets mended, not taken down

When a chimney lets water in, the tempting answer is to take the stack down below the roofline and tile over it, especially if the fire is never lit. In Minstead we would talk you out of that. The Forest Central (South) appraisal says the chimneys make an important contribution to the skyline, that the pots here are particularly rich and varied, from local handmade pots to the very distinctive Fareham pots, and that every attempt should be made to retain both stacks and pots. On a slope you can see from the lane, taking a stack down is a question for the National Park Authority before it is a job for anyone; National Park heritage and conservation guidance is the place to start.

So the repair chases the water and leaves the stack alone. Lead first: soakers, a stepped flashing and a back gutter on the high side. Then the flaunching, the mortar collar the pots sit in, which cracks and lets rain down the flue; we cut it out and form it again. Any pot that has to come off is set aside and the same pot bedded back, and open joints are repointed. If the fireplace below is out of use, a ventilated cap on the pot keeps rain out and lets the flue breathe, and the chimney stays on the skyline. More on chimney repairs.

Nearby, and next door

Roof repairs near Minstead

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

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