Roof repairs in Post Green

Roof repairs

One fault, found and mended

If water is coming through a ceiling right now, ring 07435 839745, and tell us whether the house is slate or concrete tile and whether it is listed.

You may have found a slate lying in the border with a pale gap in the slope above it, or a damp patch on the bedroom wall beside the chimney breast after heavy rain, or a line of daylight along a bungalow hip where the bedding mortar has let go and the hip tile now rocks.

Each of those is a repair to one part of the roof, and that is how we price it. We look from the road and the garden, go up where it is safe to, and check the underside from the loft. You get photographs and a written note of what it needs.

The repairs

Slate on the old houses, concrete tile on the newer ones

Around Post Green there are two kinds of roof, and they fail in different places. The old village along Dorchester Road is brick under natural slate or thatch, with brick stacks. In this part of BH16 about half the homes went up between 1945 and 1982 and about three in ten are bungalows, and post-war homes like these typically have concrete interlocking tile on trussed rafters.

Slates off their nails. Natural slate outlasts the iron nails that hold it. When a nail rusts through, the slate slides down and opens the lap below it. One or two slipped slates go back on a tingle, a lead or copper strip fixed to the batten and turned up under the slate's tail. When slates are sliding right across a slope, that is nail sickness, and a tingle on every slate just leaves the roof dotted with lead tabs. That slope wants stripping and re-nailing with the sound slates put back. A few slates take a morning, a re-nailed slope several days on a scaffold.

Cracked and flaking slates. A split slate, or one peeling apart in layers, has to come out. Its replacement has to match in size, thickness and colour, so we find a natural slate to suit, new or reclaimed, and never put a fibre cement one into an old slate roof.

Hips on the hipped slate roofs. A hipped slate roof has four hips, each capped with bedded hip tiles or a lead roll dressed over a timber roll. Old bedding cracks, and a lead roll lifts where its clips have let go. Water in at a hip soaks the hip rafter first, so we check that timber from the loft before refixing.

Gutters hidden behind a parapet. Where a parapet wall rises in front of the roof, as on the south front of Post Green House, rain runs into a hidden lead lined gutter behind it. Leaves block the outlet, the gutter fills and water spills into the wall head. Sometimes clearing the outlet is the whole job. A split lining is dressed back or renewed in lead.

Lead and mortar at brick stacks. Stepped flashing up the side of a stack is tucked into the brick joints, and when those joints weather the lead works loose. Soakers under the slates or tiles carry water past the stack, and a split soaker leaves a damp patch next to the chimney breast. Cracked flaunching, the mortar collar round the pots, lets rain down inside the stack. We rewedge and repoint the lead or renew it in rolled lead, which takes about a day for one stack. A stack whose brickwork has failed is chimney repairs.

Bungalow hips and ridges. A hipped bungalow carries a lot of hip for its size, and on the later roofs all of it was bedded in sand and cement. That mortar cracks with age, and then wind gets under a hip tile. On an unlisted house you choose between rebedding in mortar with a fixing through every tile, or a dry hip and ridge system to BS 8612 with no mortar to wash out. Both meet BS 5534. Gable ended houses lose the same mortar from under their verge tiles, and a clipped dry verge replaces it. The hips and ridge on a bungalow, or a pair of verges, are around a day from a tower on the drive.

Slipped interlocking tiles. A concrete interlocking tile hangs by its nibs on the batten. When a nib snaps or a nail rusts, the tile slides and opens the side lock. We fit a tile of the same profile and clip it down. Some seventies and eighties profiles are no longer made, so a sound tile can come off a hidden slope such as the garage, with the nearest current profile laid there.

Perished felt at the eaves. Roofs of that age have bitumen felt under the tiles, and the strip that dips into the gutter goes brittle in daylight and tears. Rain then runs behind the gutter into the fascia. We lift the bottom courses, cut the felt back, fit an eaves tray and lap new membrane over it. If the fascia has gone soft, that is fascias, soffits and guttering in Post Green, done on the same visit.

Valleys. Where two slopes meet on a later house, the valley is often mortar bedded concrete valley tiles. The bedding cracks and the tiles shift. We rebed them or fit a GRP or lead trough, lifting the tiles along both sides. Allow a day or two.

Garage, porch and extension flat roofs. Felt blisters, splits at the upstand against the house wall and fails at the outlet. Where the deck under a split is dry and firm, a patch takes a few hours. A deck that gives underfoot is wet, and a patch will not hold. See flat roofing in Post Green.

When patching is the wrong answer. Felt crumbling at every lifted tile, soft battens along a slope and tiles cracking in numbers mean the next leak is coming. That is a new covering, and it is work for our roofers in Post Green.

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.

Most of the built-up village sits inside the Lytchett Minster Conservation Area, and Dorset Council is the planning authority, so the council is who to ask before anything visible on the roof changes. If the house is listed, read the council's page on listed building consent before any slate, tile or lead detail is altered.

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 house is listed, say so when you ring, because the temporary cover then goes on held by battens and weights with nothing fixed through the slates. 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

Listed and conservation area roofs

How far a repair can go before consent

Thirteen list entries fall inside the Lytchett Minster Conservation Area boundary on the government's planning data, among them thatched cottages and slate roofs such as the hipped slate on Post Green House. On a listed building, work that alters its character needs listed building consent, and doing it without consent is a criminal offence. Routine sounding roof jobs can cross that line: swapping bedded hips for a dry fix kit, putting fibre cement or a different slate in place of the original, or fitting a lead substitute where there was lead. So on a listed roof, repair slate by slate in matching natural slate and lead, keep the bedded details, and ask Dorset Council before going further.

On an unlisted house inside the boundary, patching in the same material is maintenance. Re-covering a slope in something that looks different is the point to check first, and the Planning Portal guidance on roofs explains why. So here a repair is the sensible first choice, since it avoids a consent question a re-cover could raise. The thatched cottages along Dorchester Road in the village need a specialist thatcher, since we do not thatch, though a tiled porch on one is a tiled roof we can repair.

Nearby, and next door

Roof repairs near Post Green

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

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