Roofing in Ashley

The junction where an addition meets the house. Start here, because this is where most of it is. A back addition, a wider garage or a sun room built later gives you an abutment against a wall or a valley cut into the original slope. Done properly that junction is code rated lead in short lengths, each free to move and turned into a chased joint. Done badly it is mastic or self adhesive flashing over the top, which buys a winter.

Ridge, hips and verges. With 41.8% of the dwellings bungalows, a hipped roof here carries a lot of edge for the floor area under it, and all of it was bedded in sand and cement when the house was built. The mortar ages, not the tile: it opens along the joint, lets water behind, and the hip tiles start to travel. We lift the lot and refit dry, each ridge and hip tile screwed over a ventilated roll and dry verge units clipped along the gable. BS 5534 wants that fixing mechanical, and the roll opens an air path at the apex that mortar closes off.

The estate roofs are concrete interlocking tile laid from the late fifties on, with plain clay tile and natural slate on the inter-war houses. Repairs are a slipped course, a cracked tile after a gale, a hip tile you can rock by hand, and a leak followed back to where water gets in rather than sealed at the stain.

Sixty years is a long time to ask of bitumen felt. It splits where it laps into the gutter, the one place it is doing real work, and there is no sarking board behind it at this age, so once a tile lifts that felt is the whole weatherproofing, and we check it from the loft first. When the felt tears at a touch and the batten ends crumble, the lot comes off, wet rafter feet are spliced, and it goes back on breathable membrane and treated battens with a matched tile.

Flat roofs over the garage, the utility and the porch in felt, GRP fibreglass or EPDM rubber, with a corner of the deck opened before the falls, upstands and outlet are set. Low eaves make clearing the gutter cheap maintenance, and capping a soft timber fascia in plastic puts a lid on the rot rather than stopping it. Over a bungalow the loft is the whole footprint of the house, so insulation and eaves ventilation are worth doing while the covering is off, and Approved Document L sets the standard a renovated roof is expected to reach.

No rate per square metre: the area is the easiest thing to measure and the least useful thing to know. A single storey roof takes a lower platform, the drives are wide and most plots have a side gate, so getting material in is rarely the problem. How long it stands matters as much as its size, and the work at height rules are why it is a priced line.

Chimneys, valleys and abutments are priced one at a time. Ask whether the scaffold is in the price, whether battens and membrane are renewed or covered over, and who pays for the skip.

Eleven miles from us, covering Ashley, Bashley, Fernhill and the BH25 addresses on the New Milton side, with New Forest District Council for planning. Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 15471719, which you can look up in a minute. Thomas Hannen's business, and he is the one who comes out to price the job, not a salesman. A verified customer's 10 out of 10 on Checkatrade. The visit and the written quote are both free.