Roof repairs in Verwood

Roof repairs in BH31

One fault, one repair, priced in writing first

Water coming through a ceiling today? Ring 07435 839745 and tell us whether it is under the main roof or under the extension.

A curl of mortar on the drive from the bottom of a hip. A stain on the extension ceiling, hard against the bungalow wall, that darkens only when rain comes from one side. A damp bedroom under a dormer whose lead apron has lifted.

We check every slope from the garden and the loft hatch, and go up where a roof ladder or tower makes it safe. You get photographs of what has failed and a written quote for that part alone.

The faults

What fails on a Verwood estate roof, and the fix for each

Nearly all of Verwood is post-war, most of it built through the 1980s and 1990s, with a lot of bungalows. The roofs are concrete interlocking tile, flat or double roman profile, on light trussed rafters, over bitumen felt on the older houses and breathable membrane on later ones. They fail at the edges and junctions long before the tiles wear out.

Rocking hip and ridge tiles. A hipped bungalow has four hips running down to its corners as well as the ridge, and on most of these roofs those tiles sit on sand and cement. When the bedding cracks, the tile rocks and sheds mortar into the gutter. We lift the loose run and either rebed them with a screw or clip through each one, as BS 5534 requires, or fit a dry system to BS 8612 on dry fixed ridge and verge systems. The hips come low to the corners, so a tower or roof ladder usually does rather than a full scaffold.

Interlocking tiles that have crept. The fixing rules when these estates were tiled let many tiles go unnailed, held only by their weight and the lock beside them. When a batten goes soft or a nail rusts, a tile slides an inch and the lap opens. We lift the courses above, slide in a tile of the same profile and clip it.

Gable verges losing their grip. On detached houses and gabled chalet bungalows, a mortar verge breaks away in lumps and leaves the batten ends open to rain. Early plastic dry verge units snap at the clip, and one missing unit lets wind under the last tile. Either way we screw a matching run of dry verge units into the batten ends along the whole gable.

Perished felt behind the gutter. Where the felt laps over the fascia into the gutter, daylight has made it brittle, and once it tears water runs down behind the gutter. We lift the bottom two courses, cut the rotten strip away, fit an eaves carrier tray and lap fresh membrane under the felt above. A fascia that has gone soft is priced on the same visit as fascia and gutter work in Verwood.

Rain that only gets in on one wind. Bungalow slopes, back extensions and dormer tops tend to be shallow, and there a short head lap or a tile riding on its lock lets rain blow back underneath. Tell us which wind brings the drip, and the search narrows to one slope.

Valley troughs on L-shaped bungalows. Where a bungalow turns a corner, two slopes drain into one valley. Valley tiles bedded in mortar crack along the bedding, and GRP or lead troughs split or fill with moss and, if pines overhang your roof, needles. Clearing a blocked one can be the whole repair. A split trough means lifting the tiles on both sides to lay a new one.

Where an extension meets the house. Plenty of bungalows of this age have no chimney, so the weak junction is where a porch, conservatory or extension meets the main wall. A cement fillet there cracks as the two structures move, and water runs down inside the wall to the extension ceiling. We cut the fillet out and fit stepped lead flashing with soakers, dressed into a raked-out joint. Where a house does have a stack, the flaunching, the back gutter and the step flashing are where to look, and that is chimney repair work.

Garage and porch felt. Felt over garages and porches blisters, splits at the upstand and lets go at the outlet, and where the falls were poor the water ponds until it finds a crack. We patch a split over a dry, firm deck in a morning. If the boards give when you step on them, they have taken on water, a patch will not bond, and the roof wants doing as flat roofing in Verwood.

The cob cottages. The oldest houses here are cob cottages, mostly eighteenth century and mostly thatched. Thatch is a thatcher's trade, not ours. What we repair on them is the later tiled, slate or pantile lean-to or wing, and the brick stack. Where a lean-to meets a cob wall, the joint gets lead or a lime mortar, never a cement fillet, because cement holds water against the cob and the wall softens behind it.

Time to stop patching. Cracks across a whole slope, felt that crumbles wherever a tile is lifted and battens soft enough to take a thumbnail mean the next leak is on its way, and the roof wants re-covering by our roofers in Verwood.

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 Verwood, so a like-for-like repair on an ordinary house needs no planning application, and the Planning Portal guidance on roofs explains where that line sits. Verwood has only a few listed buildings, most of them thatched cottages of cob or brick, Holly Cottage on Manor Road among them. If yours is one, read Dorset Council's page on listed building consent before anyone touches the roof.

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. Say if the drip is under an extension or conservatory. 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

Where the water goes once it leaves your roof

Much of the ground under Verwood is cohesive and rated for shrink and swell: it shrinks as it dries and swells when wet. If a valley or gutter is choked, a hopper has split or a downpipe has pulled out of its shoe, that slope's water keeps landing at the foot of one wall. Ground soaked along one side of a house and dry along the other moves unevenly, and the foundation moves with it.

So when you ring about a leak, tell us too if a gutter overflows or a downpipe splashes the wall. On the repair visit we clear that slope's valley and gutter, check the outlet and downpipe joints, and make sure the pipe discharges into its gully or drain, which is what Approved Document H expects of roof water. Fresh diagonal cracks by a window or door on that wall are for a builder or structural surveyor, not a roofer, and we will say so.

Nearby, and next door

Roof repairs near Verwood

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

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