Roof repairs in Owermoigne

Roof repairs

Slates, tiles, stacks and lead, put right one fault at a time

If water is coming in now, ring 07435 839745 and tell us which room it shows in and, if you know, whether the roof above is slate, tile or thatch.

A slate has slid halfway down the porch roof and hangs by a corner. A damp patch has come up on the chimney breast in a bedroom after a wet week. Or the little lean-to beside the cottage drips where its roof meets the wall.

Thomas comes out, looks the roof over from the ground and from a ladder, and checks inside the roof space where there is a hatch. You get photographs of what is wrong and a written quote for that repair. If the roof over the leak is thatched, you hear straight away that it needs a thatcher, and which parts of the building, the stack or a slate porch say, are ours to mend.

The repairs

What goes wrong on slate, clay tile and old brick stacks

The oldest roofs in the village are natural slate, clay plain tile and thatch, with brick chimney stacks at the gable ends and slate over the porches and outhouses. Each fails in its own way, and each is repaired in the same material it was built in.

Slates sliding out of line. A slate is held by two nails, and on an old roof the nails rust through long before the slate wears out. That is nail sickness. One slate slips, opens a gap at the head of the one below, and rain tracks in. We slide in a slate of the same size and thickness, salvaged where a new one would stand out, and hold it with a tingle, a strip of lead or copper nailed to the batten and folded up under its tail. A handful of slates is a morning. When slates are going all over a slope, a tingle on each one is a bodge, and the slope wants stripping and re-nailing.

Clay plain tiles that have lost their grip or their face. A plain tile hangs on the batten by two small nibs, with only some courses nailed. Frost gets into an old tile, the nib snaps or the face flakes away in layers, and the tile drops or lets water through. We lift the courses above and hang a reclaimed tile of the same colour, size and camber, because a bright new clay tile shows from the lane for years.

Ridges and hips on a mortar bed. Clay ridges and bonnet hips, and the slate ridges on older roofs, sit on sand and lime or cement mortar. It cracks, the tiles loosen, and the next gale lifts one. We lift the loose ones and re-bed them with a mechanical fixing into each, as BS 5534 now asks for. On a concrete interlocking tile roof a dry ridge and dry verge kit screwed down onto a ventilated roll is usually the neater answer. Re-bedding the full length of a cottage ridge takes most of a day.

Verges and stone gable copings. Where a gable wall is finished with a stone coping above the roof edge, the joint between coping and tiles or slates is pointed or flashed. Mortar washes out of that joint, water gets under the coping into the top of the wall, and you see it as damp high up on a bedroom gable wall. We rake it out and re-point it, or dress a lead flashing under the coping so the joint no longer relies on mortar.

Chimney stacks as the leak. A brick stack leaks through its lead: the stepped flashing down the sides, the soakers under the slates or tiles, the apron at the front and the back gutter behind. Old cement fillets crack away from the brick, so we cut them out and dress new lead into the joints. Cracked flaunching round the pots and open joints in the brick let water down inside the stack, and on soft old brick the re-pointing is done in a lime-based mortar that suits it. Where a stack comes up through thatch, we can repair the brickwork, pots and flaunching, but the join between thatch and stack is settled with your thatcher. See chimney repairs.

Lead valleys and hidden gutters. A roof built as two ridges side by side drains into a lead-lined gutter between them. Leaves settle in it, and lead laid in over-long pieces splits as it moves with the heat. We clear it, and if it has split we relay it in shorter lengths with a step at each joint, lifting the slates each side. Allow a day or two.

Slate porches and outhouses. These small steep roofs lose slates and leak where they meet the main wall. A new slate or two and a fresh lead flashing along the wall is usually a morning.

Flat roofs on extensions and garages. Felt, GRP and EPDM rubber split, blister and hold ponding water, and the upstand against the wall is where most of them let go. If the boards under a split are still firm and dry, a patch over it takes a few hours. A deck that flexes underfoot is soaked and will not hold a patch. More on flat roofing in Owermoigne.

Water that is not the roof at all. A gutter choked with moss or a sagging run that spills behind a rotten fascia can wet a wall just like a missing slate. Check fascias, soffits and guttering in Owermoigne before paying for a roof repair that was never needed.

After a gale, and when repairs stop paying. A few slates or tiles blown out and a lifted ridge are a repair. Nail sickness on every slope, battens gone soft and underlay or old felt that tears when touched are different. That roof wants recovering, and that is a job for our roofers in Owermoigne.

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.

In Owermoigne a like for like repair to an unlisted house needs no application, and Planning Portal guidance on roofs sets out where that line sits. If your house is one of the listed buildings in the parish, talk to Dorset Council about listed building consent before any material on the roof is changed.

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 the wet shows on a chimney breast or high on a gable wall, say so when you ring, because that points to the stack or the coping and not the slates, and if the roof over it is thatched we will tell you to call a thatcher as well. 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

Matching the old roofs in the village core

Owermoigne has its own conservation area around the historic core, and most of the 13 listed entries in the parish stand inside it. The listed cottages along Church Lane are mostly thatched, and we do not thatch, so a leak in the thatch itself is for a specialist thatcher. Beside them are roofs that are ours to repair: slate porches and outhouses, brick stacks, and slate and clay tile roofs such as The Rectory, which is slated with stone copings on its gables.

Inside the conservation area, repairing in the same material is maintenance. That means a salvaged or matched natural slate, a clay plain tile of the same size and colour, and a mortar on an old stack that suits the brick. Swapping slate for concrete, or clay for a different profile, changes how the building looks, so ask Dorset Council first. On a listed building the law says works affecting the character of a listed building need consent, and Dorset Council deals with listed building consent. So we photograph the roof and agree the specification with you, and with the council where it applies, before a slate comes off.

Nearby, and next door

Roof repairs near Owermoigne

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

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