Roof repairs in Redlynch

Roof repairs, Redlynch

One fault, found and mended

If rain is already getting into a room, ring 07435 839745 and tell us which ceiling it is under and whether the roof above is tiled, slated or flat.

It usually starts with something you can see from the garden. A hip tile has shifted on the bungalow after a blustery night. Grey mortar is lying on the path under the gable. There is a damp patch on the chimney breast upstairs, or a drip by the back door where the flat roof of the kitchen meets the house wall.

Thomas looks at every slope from the ground, goes up where it is safe and checks the loft with a torch. You get photographs of what failed and a written, itemised price for that repair. If the whole covering has had its day, we say so, and that becomes a job for our roofers in Redlynch.

What we mend

The faults on Redlynch roofs, house by house

Hipped bungalows and post-war detached houses. About three in ten homes in the village are bungalows, and a large share of its houses went up after the war. Houses of that age are commonly roofed in concrete interlocking tiles, and the tile itself rarely wears out. What gives up first is the mortar under the hips and ridge: it cracks, lets water in behind it and lets go, so the hip tiles start to rock and one eventually slides off. We either rebed the loose run in fresh mortar with a screw or clip through each tile, or take the mortar off altogether and fit a dry hip and dry ridge system, which holds every tile mechanically as BS 5534 now expects. Once the access is up, a full run of hips and ridge on a bungalow is a short job.

Gable verges. On the detached houses with gables, the mortar along the verge falls out in lumps and the end tiles lift in wind. A new mortar bed with a fixing, or a clip-on dry verge, puts the edge back. We check the undercloak board beneath it too, because a rotten one lets the new verge sag within a few winters.

Slipped interlocking tiles. On a shallow pitch the nail or clip tends to fail before the tile does, and a tile creeps down out of its lap. We lift the courses above, re-fix the tile and clip it. If the profile has gone out of production, we borrow a sound tile from a hidden slope and fill that gap with the nearest match.

Felt gone brittle at the eaves. Under many post-war roofs is bitumen felt that has cracked where it drapes into the gutter. Rain then runs behind the gutter onto the fascia and the wall plate, so you see rot and staining at the eaves while the tiles look fine. We lift the bottom course, let in an eaves carrier tray and new membrane, and re-lay the tiles.

Older brick and cob cottages. Between the newer houses are cottages with clay plain tile or some slate, ridges bedded in lime and brick stacks. Here the tile itself fails: it flakes or splits after enough hard winters, and peg or nailed plain tiles drop when their nails rust. Often there is no underlay at all, just old torching on the underside. We match the tile in size and colour, reclaimed if needed, keep lime on lime, and never put cement onto soft brick or cob. On a gable with saddleback coping, like the one at Woodfalls Farmhouse, cracked joints in the coping let water into the wall, so we check those too.

Chimneys. On the cottages, a damp chimney breast usually traces back to a cracked cement fillet, a split back gutter on the uphill side or open joints in the stack. We cut out the fillet and dress new lead flashings and soakers into the brickwork. Loose pots, open joints or crumbling flaunching go to our chimney repairs side.

Valleys, porches and extensions. With this many trees about, leaves sit in the valleys and in the gutter behind a stack, water backs up over the lap and finds the ceiling. On the later infill houses, usually dry-fixed already, the covering is seldom the fault: the leak is at a valley, a porch abutment or the lead where a roof meets a wall. Split lead valleys we re-line in lead or GRP. Overflowing gutters at the eaves are covered under gutters and fascias in Redlynch.

Flat roofs over garages and kitchens. Felt fails at the upstand against the wall and where it meets the tiled slope. A small split over a dry, firm deck can be patched. A soft deck cannot, and then it is a new covering, which is under flat roofing in Redlynch.

Thatched cottages. Several old cottages in the parish are thatched, some of them cob. Thatch is outside our trade, so for the thatch itself you want a specialist thatcher. A tiled lean-to or porch against the cottage, or the lead round its brick stack, we can look at.

Gale damage, and the point where patching stops paying. Wind lifts ridge and hip tiles and strips verges first. For an insurance claim, keep our photographs: the three questions the Financial Ombudsman asks about a storm claim turn on the weather and the state of the roof. If tiles are slipping all over a slope, the felt is perished and the fixings are rusted, a repair buys a season. Then get a re-cover price from our roofers in Redlynch next to the repair price.

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.

For an unlisted house, a like-for-like repair needs no application. If a repair would change the look of the roof, we check who decides first, because the village straddles the National Park line (more on that below). Planning Portal guidance on roofs covers the basics.

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 hip or ridge tiles have come off, keep everyone away from that side of the house, because a loose run tends to shed another tile in the next gust. 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 National Park line runs through the village

A large part of Redlynch lies inside the New Forest National Park, and the rest sits outside it with Wiltshire Council as the planning authority. The line wanders between houses, so neighbours can answer to different offices. St Mary's church at Lover is on the Park side. St Birinus church at Morgan's Vale is on the Wiltshire side. Look your address up on the National Park Authority's interactive property map before you agree a repair that changes anything.

Re-fixing tiles, rebedding a hip, relining a valley or new flashings are like-for-like and need nothing from either office on an unlisted house. It starts to matter when a repair turns into a change: clay tiles swapped for concrete, a rooflight added while the scaffold is up, or a dormer. Park land is article 2(3) land, so permitted development for a dwellinghouse is tighter there, with roof enlargements under Class B not allowed at all. There are 12 listed entries around the village, Singreen and Woodfalls Farmhouse among them, and for any listed house the listed building rules mean consent from whichever authority covers that address. The simplest route is to keep the repair matched, so the question never comes up.

Nearby, and next door

Roof repairs near Redlynch

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

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