Roof repairs in Stourpaine

Roof repairs

Mending the part that has failed on a Stourpaine roof

If rain is getting into the house as you read this, ring 07435 839745 and say which room it shows in and which slope sits above it. Our emergency roof repairs page says what to do meanwhile.

A clay tile lies in pieces on the path after a wet westerly. A brown tidemark spreads across the sloping ceiling of an attic bedroom. Or the felt on the kitchen extension has opened along a seam and a drip lands by the back door.

We drive over from Boscombe, get up by roof ladder or tower where that is safe, check the timbers from inside, and photograph the fault. You then get a written price for putting that fault right.

The repairs

Slipped tiles, tired ridges and wet valleys

The listed houses in the village carry thatch, handmade clay plain tile, natural slate and, on some, stone slate at the eaves, all on steep old pitches. A later extension or garage may add interlocking concrete tile or a flat roof.

Plain clay tiles that slide or split. An old handmade plain tile hangs by two nibs or a single oak peg over a batten. Once a nib snaps or a peg rots, the tile creeps down and opens a gap for the course above. One stray tile is lifted back and held with a tile hook fixed to the batten. A split tile comes out and a reclaimed one goes in, matched for colour and for camber, because a flat new tile stands proud on a curved old slope and lets rain in at the lap. When a whole course lets go at once, the batten behind it has usually failed, and that is a strip of the slope to open up, not a single tile.

Natural slate at a low angle. Stourpaine House on Manor Road is listed with a shallow pitched slate roof, and slate laid that flat has little in hand. Before we blame a slate for a leak on a low slope, we measure the head lap. If the overlap is short, rain driven hard against the slope creeps up between the slates, and a new slate fitted at the same lap will leak just the same. A slate slipped by rusted nails, called nail sickness, goes back on a copper or lead tingle. A broken one is swapped for reclaimed natural slate of the same size and thickness.

Ridge, hip and verge. Clay ridge and hip tiles sit on a mortar bed, and the gable verges are pointed in mortar too. Frost opens the bedding until the wind rocks a ridge tile free. We lift the loose run, keep every tile that is sound, and relay it with a mechanical fixing to each tile, as BS 5534 now asks for. On a later house or an outbuilding, a dry ridge and dry verge to BS 8612 takes the mortar out of the picture. On a listed or period roof in the conservation area, we bed the ridge back in a lime mortar, which moves with old timbers. A ridge run is about a day.

Valleys and abutments. Wherever a cross wing or a later extension joins the main roof there is a valley taking the water from two slopes at once, so a small split lets in a lot. A split lead valley is relaid with the tiles either side lifted, which takes a day or two. Where a slope runs up against a taller wall, the joint wants lead soakers under each tile and a stepped flashing tucked into the brick joints above, and a cracked cement fillet in that spot is cut out and replaced in lead.

Damp by the chimney breast. A wet patch beside the stack may be the lead round it or the stack itself. If it is loose flaunching or open joints on the chimney, that is chimney repairs, and new lead on its own would not stop it.

Thatched cottages and the roofs beside them. Most of the listed cottages inside the conservation area are thatched, Rose Cottage and Hod Cottage on Havelins Street among them. We do not thatch. Water coming through the thatch itself is a job for a specialist thatcher. Our part is a tiled or slated porch, lean-to or extension that butts up to a thatched cottage, the lead where the two meet, and the brick stack where it rises through.

Flat roofs on extensions and dormers. Felt splits at its seams and blisters in summer, GRP fibreglass cracks at the trims, and EPDM rubber lifts at the upstand against the house wall. Where the boards underneath are still dry and solid, a split can be patched in a few hours. If the deck gives underfoot, a patch will not hold. More on flat roofing in Stourpaine.

Gutters under a steep slope. A steep roof sends its water down fast, and a blocked or sagging gutter spills it down the wall or behind the fascia. A rotten fascia board or a cracked downpipe is fascias, soffits and guttering work.

Gale damage, and when to stop mending. We sheet and batten the gap as a temporary repair while matching material is found. Mending stops making sense once the felt under the tiles has perished, the battens are soft, or pegs and nails are failing right across a slope. At that point the quote says so plainly, and a new covering goes to our roofers in Stourpaine.

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.

Stourpaine has its own conservation area and sits inside the Dorset National Landscape, with Dorset Council as the planning authority. A like for like repair is maintenance, but on a listed house anything that changes the material or the look needs listed building consent before we start.

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. Tell us whether the wet is under a tiled slope, a slated one, a flat roof, or the join with a thatched neighbour, so the right covering comes with us for the temporary repair. 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 checking

Stone at the eaves of an old tiled roof

Some older roofs in the village, including two listed houses on Havelins Street, have a band of stone slate along the bottom courses with clay tile above. The listing text calls these stone-slate margins. It is an old Dorset habit: hard-wearing stone where the water runs off, lighter tile above. If yours has a band of stone at the eaves, a slipped or cracked piece is not a job for a spare tile or a fibre-cement slate. It needs a reclaimed stone slate of the same thickness, found before the visit, and hung the old way on a peg or nail into a sound batten.

That stone is heavy, and its weight bears on the rafter feet and the wall plate, the first timbers to rot on an old roof. So a stone band that is slipping or bellying can be a timber fault showing on the surface. We may need to lift a length of it to see the rafter feet, and we price it that way from the start instead of as one slate to refix. The gutter brackets and fascia sit behind the same stone, so they get checked and renewed if tired, never simply refixed over. On a listed house, swapping the stone for tile is a change of material and needs listed building consent from Dorset Council. Putting stone back where stone was is a repair.

Nearby, and next door

Roof repairs near Stourpaine

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

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