Roof repairs in Sandford

Roof repairs in BH20

Mending the part that has failed

Water dripping through a bedroom ceiling in Sandford today is a phone call: ring 07435 839745 and tell us which room and which side of the house it is on.

A lump of hip mortar has dropped onto the path beside the bungalow, and a tile knocks on windy nights. A brown ring has spread across the ceiling below the spot where the garage roof joins the house. Or the extension's felt has blistered and a puddle sits by the outlet for days.

Thomas looks from the garden, puts a torch into the loft and goes up a roof ladder where the height allows. You get photographs of the fault and a written price to mend it.

The repairs

Where a Sandford roof lets water in

Most of the village went up after the war, the busiest years being the late sixties and early seventies, with a thin older strip along Sandford Road, so the typical roof is a big profile concrete interlocking tile, laid on bitumen felt with no boarding under it, finished with mortar at the ridge, hips and verges.

Hips and ridges that rock. The bedding mortar is the first thing to give up. It cracks and washes out, and the tiles start to lift in a gale. A hipped bungalow carries a long run of hip for its size, so check all four corners, not just the ridge seen from the road. We either rebed the loose run with a screw or clip into each tile, or strip it and fit a dry ridge and dry hip system fixed to BS 5534. A bungalow's ridge and hips take about a day.

Verges on the gable ended semis and terraces. Where the house has a gable, the mortar under the end tiles is what falls out. Dry verge units fitted over each end tile and screwed into the batten ends replace that mortar. Both gable ends of a Sandford semi can usually be done in a day.

Interlocking tiles that have slid. On roofs of this age a lot of tiles were held by their weight and their side lock, with nails or clips only on some courses. When a nail rusts through, the tile creeps down and opens the head lap below it. We lift the courses above, refix the tile with a clip, and swap any cracked one for a tile of the same profile. Three slipped tiles are a morning's work, not a reason to relay the slope.

Felt that has perished at the eaves. The strip of felt that runs over the fascia into the gutter sees daylight, goes brittle and tears, so rain off the underlay drips behind the gutter. We take off the bottom course, cut the dead felt back, fit an eaves carrier tray and lap a short strip of breathable membrane over it. A soft fascia board behind it is work for fascias, soffits and guttering in Sandford, and both can be done on one visit.

The chimney stack. Where a stack on one of these houses was finished with a mortar fillet instead of lead, the fillet shrinks away from the brick and water runs down inside the stack to a bedroom ceiling or a chimney breast. We cut the fillet out and flash the stack in code lead, with the cover flashing chased into the mortar joint and pointed. Allow a day for a single stack. There is more on chimney repairs.

Valleys where two roofs meet. An L shaped house, or one with a garage or extension roof tied into the main slope, has a valley. Here that is usually mortar bedded valley tiles or an old felt or lead lining. We clear it and water test it first, then either rebed cracked valley tiles or re-form a split lining in lead or a GRP valley trough. One to two days, because the cut tiles either side have to come up.

Flat roofs on garages, extensions and porches. Mostly felt, with the odd one since redone in GRP or EPDM rubber. They fail at blisters, at splits along the laps, where the upstand pulls off the wall, and at the outlet where water ponds. A split on a firm, dry deck can be patched in a few hours. A deck that flexes when you step on it has soaked up water and a patch will not stick, so that becomes a re-cover. See flat roofing in Sandford.

After a gale. The first job is to make the roof weathertight, refixing what is there or fixing a temporary sheet, then the repair is priced. Claiming on home insurance? Photograph the damage before anything is moved. Our page on emergency roof repairs sets out the first steps.

Slate on the older buildings. Slate here is on the older fabric only, and it fails through nail sickness, the nails rusting until slates slide out. A few are refixed with a tingle, a lead or copper strip hooked under the bottom edge. Slates moving across a whole slope mean that slope wants stripping and re-nailing.

When to stop patching. If the felt crumbles wherever a tile is lifted, the battens are soft enough to push a screwdriver into, and tiles are cracking across the slope, the next repair will not be the last. That is a re-cover, and it belongs to our roofers in Sandford.

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.

A like for like repair in Sandford needs no planning application, because no conservation area covers the village, the nearest being Wareham's, about a kilometre away, and the Planning Portal guidance on roofs sets out where that line sits. There are four listed entries in and around the village, Camp Cottage on Sandford Road and the Church of St Martin among them, and if your house is listed, read Dorset Council's page on listed building consent before a tile or slate 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. When you ring about a Sandford roof, say whether the wet patch sits under a valley, a chimney or an outside wall, because that narrows the search. 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

The forest edge

Needles, moss and the valley that backs up

Sandford sits against Wareham Forest, with Gore Heath to the north, and much of that forest is conifer plantation. If your garden backs onto the trees, needles and leaf litter land on the roof all year and wash down into the valleys, the gutter behind a bungalow hip and a flat garage roof's outlet. Once that silts up, a heavy shower spills over the valley lining or the gutter and finds its way indoors, and the stain looks like a failed tile when none has failed. So the first repair is to clear it, run water down it and look at the lining, before anybody prices for tiles.

Where a slope sits in shade, moss holds damp against the concrete and lifts the tails of the interlocking tiles until wind driven rain gets past the lap. We scrape it off by hand. We do not jet wash a roof, because the jet drives water under the laps and can crack the tiles. Any treatment afterwards falls under the biocides regime the HSE administers, and we will not promise how long it keeps the moss off. A bedded or felt valley that keeps filling is the case for re-forming it in lead or a GRP trough, which gives debris less to catch on.

Nearby, and next door

Roof repairs near Sandford

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

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