Roof repairs in Sixpenny Handley

Roof repairs

Mend the fault on a Sixpenny Handley roof, not the whole roof

If water is coming through a ceiling in your Handley house right now, ring 07435 839745 and tell us whether the wet patch sits by the chimney breast, against an outside wall or out in the middle of the room.

A slate on the path, then another from the same slope a fortnight later. A brown ring on the bedroom ceiling beside the flue pipe after the wood burner has been going all winter. A drip into the kitchen from the flat roof of the extension once the leaves have come down.

Behind each one sits a single fault on the roof. We go up where it is safe, look at the underside from your loft with a torch, photograph what is wrong and write down what it needs. If the covering is past mending, we tell you, and that job belongs with our roofers in Sixpenny Handley.

The repairs

Slipped slates, tired nails and leaking stacks

Slates sliding down one after another. On a slate roof that has been up for a century, the slate itself is usually still sound. The nails are what give out, which roofers call nail sickness. Once the head of a nail rusts off, the slate drops out of its course, and its neighbours follow over the next few blows.

We slide a matching slate back into the gap and hold it with a tingle, a strip of lead or copper hooked over the batten and folded up under the tail. A handful of slates takes a morning from a roof ladder or a tower.

Plain clay tiles that flake or lose a nib. A clay plain tile hangs on its batten by two nibs. Frost gets into an old tile and lifts its face off in layers, a nib snaps and the tile slides, or on the oldest roofs an oak peg rots through. We lift the courses above, fit a sound clay tile and fix it with a nail or a tile hook, as BS 5534, the code of practice for slating and tiling expects of every tile. An old handmade tile differs in size and curve from a new machine-made one, so a reclaimed tile of the same pattern is the one that sits flat in the gap. A concrete interlocking tile will not go into a plain tile roof at all.

Tile-hung cheeks and gables. Where a house carries tile hanging on a gable, a dormer cheek or a stretch of upper wall, a slipped tile matters more than it looks. When a hung tile slips, rain gets behind the course and runs down inside the wall, so the damp shows a floor below the roof. We refix the course and check the batten behind it for rot while it is open.

Brick stacks, stove flues and boiler flues. Handley is not on mains gas, so a stove or an oil or LPG boiler flue coming up through the slope is one more hole to keep sealed. The lead or rubber collar round a twin-wall flue lifts, or the storm collar above it slides down and lets rain run inside the pipe. On a brick stack the flaunching round the pots cracks, the stepped lead works out of its mortar joint, and a sand and cement fillet laid where lead soakers belong splits along the tile line. We re-seal or renew the flue flashing, rebuild the flaunching and cut in proper soakers with a stepped cover flashing. A stack is a day or so with a safe platform round it. More on chimney repairs.

Ridge and hip. A ridge tile that rocks has cracked bedding under it. We take up the loose run, clean off the old mortar and set each tile again with a fixing through it. A gable verge that has shed its mortar gets the same, or a dry verge on a concrete tile roof.

Valleys. A lead valley on an old roof splits where it was laid in lengths too long to move with the heat, and a mortar valley cracks along its edge. Relaying one means lifting the tiles or slates either side and laying new lead in shorter lengths, one to two days. A bead of mastic over the split lasts a season.

Kicked eaves and the gutter underneath. Where an older roof flattens out at the eaves over sprockets, short timbers that give the eaves their kick, the bottom courses need a closer look. Water slows as it reaches that shallower pitch, so a cracked tile in the last few courses lets in rain sooner than one higher up, and a gutter that overflows soaks the rafter feet. We check the bottom courses and the board behind the gutter together. Renewing a soft fascia or a sagging run is fascias, soffits and guttering in Sixpenny Handley.

Felt, GRP and rubber over extensions and garages. A felt flat roof fails at a blister, a split, the upstand against the house and the outlet where leaves pile up. GRP cracks at its edge trim and EPDM rubber lifts at a joint. Where the boards below are dry and solid, a split is cut back and patched in a few hours. Where your foot sinks into the deck, no patch will stay down. See flat roofing in Sixpenny Handley.

After a named storm. If the wind has left a missing tile or a cracked slate, photograph it from the ground before anything is touched, then again once a temporary sheet is on, as an insurer weighs the three questions the Financial Ombudsman asks about a storm claim. We make the roof weathertight and give you dated photographs with a written note of the fault.

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.

No conservation area covers Sixpenny Handley, so mending your roof in the same materials needs no application, and Planning Portal guidance on roofs shows where that stops. If your house is one of the listed ones, changing a material or a detail needs listed building consent from Dorset Council before any of it is touched.

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 your house joins a thatched neighbour, say so when you ring, so any temporary cover goes on your tiles and stays clear of the thatch. 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

A village rebuilt after 1892, and what that means for a repair

In May 1892 a fire destroyed most of Handley and left nearly two hundred people without a home, so most of the village centre was built again after it. If your house went up in that rebuild and still wears its first covering, the slates or tiles have been on well over a century, and so have the nails, battens and any mortar torching behind them. If it was re-covered later, the roof is far younger than the walls.

The garden will not tell you which. The loft and one lifted slate will: the battens, the felt or lack of it, and the nails.

That answer decides whether you repair or replace. On a later covering, one slipped slate is a one-off and a tingle is the fix. On an original covering, the question is how much life is left in the nails. If the loft shows rusted nail tips and soft battens right across a slope, you would be paying for scaffold to chase slips one by one, and that slope wants stripping, new battens and membrane, priced by our roofers in Sixpenny Handley. Where it is close, the quote prices both side by side.

A few older buildings survived, and seven entries in the village are listed, among them Rose Cottage on the High Street and Denzil Cottage on Dean Lane, both thatched. Thatch is for a specialist thatcher. Where a tiled roof meets it, we mend the lead and tiles on your side.

Nearby, and next door

Roof repairs near Sixpenny Handley

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

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