Roof repairs in Three Legged Cross

Roof repairs

Put right the part that is letting water in

If water is dripping through a ceiling as you read this, ring 07435 839745 and tell us which room it is in and which side of the house.

A concrete tile has slid down the bungalow roof and sits proud of its neighbours. There are crumbs of mortar on the path under a hip after a windy night. Or the kitchen extension ceiling has a damp line along the wall it shares with the house.

The houses here are mostly seventies and early eighties, so the faults are the ones a roof of that age throws up. We look from the ground, the loft hatch and, where it is safe, a roof ladder, and photograph the fault for you. Our main roof repairs page explains how we trace a leak.

The repairs

The faults on a seventies roof, and how each one is fixed

Nearly every roof in the village is concrete interlocking tile over bitumen felt, with ridges, hips and verges bedded in mortar. These are the repairs that roof type needs.

A tile that has slid or cracked. When these roofs were laid, not every course was nailed or clipped. A tile stays put by its weight and its side lock until the nail that was there rusts through or the batten under it goes soft, and then it creeps down and opens the lap. Cracks usually come from someone walking the slope to fit an aerial or a dish, or from a falling branch. We lift the courses above, slide in a tile of the same profile and fix it with a tile clip, as BS 5534 now expects. Where that profile is no longer made, the quote says what we would use. A few tiles on a bungalow take roughly a morning.

Loose hips and ridge on the bungalows. A hipped bungalow has four hip lines running down to its corners, each tile sitting on sand and cement. After forty-odd winters that bedding cracks, washes out and leaves the tile rocking, and rain gets in at the joint between one tile and the next. If two or three are loose and the rest of the line is solid, we rebed that stretch in fresh mortar and screw each tile down. If the whole hip sounds hollow, fresh mortar only restarts the clock, so we strip that hip and fix it mechanically, to BS 8612 on dry fixed ridge and verge systems, with a hip iron at the foot. The ridge on top gets the same test.

Verges on the gable ends. On gable ends and at the ends of terraced rows, verge mortar falls out in lumps. A short gap can be repointed. A whole verge coming away takes clip-on dry verge units.

Felt that has reached the end. On most of these houses the bitumen felt under the tiles is forty to fifty years old. It turns brittle, tears wherever tiles were lifted before, and lets wind-driven rain through at its laps. Whenever we lift tiles for a repair we check the felt around the hole. If it is still pliable, a strip of breathable membrane goes in under the repair. If it snaps when bent and the battens crumble, patching the tiles above just moves the leak one course along. That is a re-cover, and our roofers in Three Legged Cross page covers how that job runs.

Lead where an extension meets the house. Extensions, porches and garages against the main wall need a flashing where their roof meets the brickwork: properly, lead stepped into the mortar joints with a soaker under each tile. Some were done with a mortar fillet instead, which cracks away from the wall and lets water run down behind it. We cut out the fillet, chase the joints, dress new lead with soakers and point the chase. A section of flashing is usually a day.

Valleys that overflow. An L-shaped house, or an extension meeting the main slope at right angles, has a valley. On this age of roof it may be open lead or a preformed trough liner with the tiles cut in alongside. Leaves and moss build up in it, the water backs up over the edge of the liner and runs under the tiles. A split liner or cracked lead means lifting the cut tiles on both sides and laying a new valley, which is a day or two.

Chimneys, where there are any. Plenty of houses here were built with no chimney at all. Where a brick stack does exist, the leak is normally in the back gutter behind it, the side flashings, cracked flaunching round the pots or brick that has started to flake. The lead we do with the roof. Work on the stack itself is chimney repairs.

Flat roofs on garages and extensions. These carry felt from several decades, and a few have been redone in GRP or EPDM rubber. Blisters, split laps, a puddle sitting over a blocked outlet and a perished upstand or drip edge are where they leak. On a firm, dry deck a patch or a new outlet holds. If the deck gives underfoot, a patch will not, and it becomes flat roofing in Three Legged Cross.

Terraced rows and flats. In a terraced row your slope runs into your neighbours' as one roof, so a repair near the party line can mean lifting tiles on their side. Have a word with them first. In one of the flats, the roof is normally the freeholder's or managing agent's to repair, so report the leak to them.

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 Three Legged Cross needs no planning application, as no conservation area covers the village or sits near it, and the Planning Portal guidance on roofs shows where that would change. The one listed building is Chapel Farm Cottage on Ringwood Road, which is thatched and so a job for a specialist thatcher. If your own home is listed, read Dorset Council's page on listed building consent before anything on the roof 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. When you ring about a roof in Three Legged Cross, say whether it is a bungalow, a house or a flat, and where the water is showing. 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

When the gap at the extension keeps coming back

The ground under Three Legged Cross is clay that shrinks in a dry summer and swells when wet. So a leaking gutter joint, an overflowing valley or a blocked outlet on a garage roof is more than a stain: every storm tips water at the foot of the wall and soaks the ground beside the footing. When we mend one, we check where the downpipe ends. If it spills onto the ground by the house and not into a gully or drain, we tell you, as Approved Document H expects roof water to be carried away. The wider run is fascias, soffits and guttering work.

That ground is also why an extension flashing deserves a second look. If the joint where a garage or kitchen roof meets the house has opened, or was filled once and cracked again, sealant or a fresh mortar fillet will crack too. The lasting fix is lead chased into the brickwork in steps, with soakers under the tiles, which copes with a little movement. If the gap is widening, or cracks in the brickwork line up with it, have a structural engineer look before you pay for roof work. We will tell you that on the visit and not just re-flash it.

Nearby, and next door

Roof repairs near Three Legged Cross

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

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