Roof repairs in Poole

Roof repairs

Find where it gets in, fix that point

If water is coming through a ceiling now, ring 07435 839745 and say which floor and which room it is dripping into. There is more on emergency roof repairs here.

A clay tile has slid down the front slope of a house off the High Street. The bay roof on an Edwardian terrace drips onto the bedroom sill whenever it rains hard. A top floor flat has a brown tide mark by the outside wall, and nobody in the block is sure whose job it is.

We look from the street, go up where it is safe, and check the loft from inside. You get photographs and a written quote for that fault alone. Our main roof repairs page explains how each repair is done.

The repairs

Clay, slate, concrete and felt: where Poole roofs let water in

Poole town has Georgian and Victorian in the old town, Edwardian and inter-war terraces and semis further out, and a lot of post-war and later flats. Each leaks at its own weak points.

Plain clay tiles in the Old Town. On the two and three storey brick buildings around the Quay and the High Street, a plain tile hangs on its nibs, nailed every few courses or pegged. When the nail rusts or the peg rots, the tile slides and opens the double lap. We replace it with a reclaimed clay plain tile matched for size, colour and camber, held with a tile hook or tingle where it cannot be nailed. A concrete plain tile sits flat and shows from the street. Many of these fronts stand at the back of the pavement, so a tower or scaffold goes up under the HSE rules on roofwork before anyone steps onto the slope.

Natural slate on the same streets. Slate outlasts its nails. The nail corrodes and the slate drops out of line. One or two slipped slates get a tingle, a strip of lead or copper hooked under the bottom edge. A slope already dotted with tingles, with more moving, wants its slates off, sorted and re-nailed.

Gable stacks, dormers and parapets. Gable chimney stacks and period dormers are lead jobs. Step flashings pull out of the brick joints, soakers split, and dormer cheek lead cracks along old folds. We re-form them in code lead, and a lime-pointed stack is repointed in lime above it. See chimney repairs for the stack itself. Behind a parapet sits a box gutter lined in lead or felt, draining to one outlet. When silt blocks the outlet, water rises over the lining and under the tiles. Sometimes clearing it is the whole repair; a split lining is relined.

Edwardian terraces in Heckford Park. In Longfleet, on Garland Road, Kingston Road, St Margaret's Road and Tatnam Road, the terraces are two storey with bays and gabled roofs. The council's appraisal for the Heckford Park Conservation Area records that most of the original roofing there has already been replaced with concrete tiles. Water gets in at three places. Where the bay roof meets the main slope, concrete tile is cut round a lead valley, and the cut edge and the lead leak. Ridge and verge mortar cracks and drops out. And the brick chimneys and pots, which the appraisal names as part of the area's character, leak at the flashing and flaunching, so the repair is new lead on the stack you have, not taking it down. The decorative bargeboards sit under the verge tiles, so a verge is repaired without levering against them, and soft timber is fascias, soffits and guttering work.

Inter-war hips and bays. About a fifth of homes here are inter-war: hipped semis and terraces in concrete interlocking tile or clay plain tile. Hip mortar cracks and a hip tile works loose near the eaves. We rebed with a mechanical fixing in every tile, or fit a dry fix hip to BS 8612. The small flat or lead roof over a bay leaks at the upstand against the wall, straight into the front bedroom. Under the tiles is torn bitumen felt or, on some, no underlay at all, which leaves little margin and shifts the repair or replace decision.

Post-war tile and flat roofs. The largest share of Poole's homes went up after 1945, mostly in concrete interlocking tile. On a dry ridge a screw backs out or a union clip breaks and the ridge tile lifts in wind, which is a refix with new fixings. Flat roofs over extensions, garages, dormers and block stairwells blister, split and lose their upstand. Over a sound deck that is a patch; where the deck gives underfoot, a patch or overlay seals the wet in, and it needs a new deck in felt, GRP or EPDM. More on flat roofing in Poole.

After a storm. Tiles on the lawn or a verge lifted by a gale get a temporary sheet or refix, then a permanent repair fixed with nails or clips as BS 5534 expects. You get dated photographs for your insurer.

When patching stops. Tiles cracking across whole slopes, felt that crumbles when touched and soft battens mean a re-cover, which belongs with our roofers in Poole. You can read how we price a job before we come.

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.

BCP Council is the planning authority in Poole, and the Old Town and the Quay sit inside the Town Centre Heritage Conservation Area, with Poole Park and Heckford Park conservation areas close by. Before a repair changes a roof material, check whether your street is in one: the council keeps the list. Many Old Town buildings are listed, and on those even a like for like repair should be checked against the council's listed building records 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. When you ring about a Poole roof, say whether it is a house or a flat and which floor the water is coming through. 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

The leak is over a flat: who can order the repair

A third of homes in Poole town are flats or maisonettes. Under most leases the roof and outside walls stay with the freeholder, so a leaseholder or tenant with a stain on the top floor ceiling generally cannot book the repair themselves. Today, report it in writing to the managing agent or freeholder, with photos and the date it started. Tenants report to their landlord. Above a shop in the Old Town, the landlord of the whole building instructs the roof, not the flat upstairs.

A small repair, such as a slipped tile or a split in the felt over a stairwell, usually goes straight through the agent. Consultation under section 20 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985 only applies where one leaseholder's share of the work passes the legal threshold. Where a leak cannot wait for that, the law lets the freeholder ask the tribunal to dispense with consultation for urgent work.

When the agent or freeholder asks us out, we make the roof weathertight and price the make-safe and the permanent repair on separate lines, so the first can be signed off on its own and the second can go through their process.

Nearby, and next door

Roof repairs near Poole

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

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