Roofing in Ashley Heath
Repairs, dry ridge and verge, strip and re-cover, flat roofs, leadwork and rainwater goods across Ashley Heath and the BH24 addresses.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
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On most Ashley Heath roofs the covering outlasts the mortar that holds its edges down. So before you accept a price for a new roof, get somebody to tell you whether the ridge, the hips and the verges are the actual fault.
Roof trouble in Ashley Heath tends to start at the ridge, on a ceiling or at the gutter. A ridge tile that rocks when the wind gets under it. A brown ring on a bedroom ceiling after a wet week. A gutter that empties itself over the front door every time it rains properly. If the brown ring is dripping already, ring 07435 839745 and we will talk you through what to do on the bungalow before we get there.
Bungalows are the ordinary house in Ashley Heath, and that changes both what we find and what it takes to put right: the roof is wide and low, there is a great deal of edge to it, and the loft runs over the whole house. We get on the roof, put our head through the hatch, and photograph what is genuinely there before anybody talks about money. The survey and the written price are both free.
The work
A hipped bungalow is mostly edge
A hipped bungalow is mostly edge. At 52.2% bungalows, the roofs in Ashley Heath carry more metres of edge than any other shape of house, and the edge is where mortar bedding lets go. Hip tiles start to slide, the ridge line opens along its length, and the gable verge drops its bedding onto the drive in lumps.
The answer is a dry fix system: every ridge and hip tile screwed to a batten over a ventilated roll, and a dry verge clipped down the gable. That is the mechanical fixing BS 5534 asks for, and it opens an air path at the apex that a bed of mortar closes off.
Underlay, battens and nails. There is no sarking board under a roof of this age, so once a tile lifts the only thing between you and the weather is bitumen felt. It goes brittle and tears where it laps into the gutter, which is the one place it has to be sound. Batten ends and rafter feet get checked from inside, because a nail rusted through will drop a tile on a still day.
Repairs are slipped, cracked and missing tiles, storm damage, and leaks followed back to where water gets in rather than patched where the stain shows. Nearly everything built from the sixties on is concrete interlocking tile, with plain tile and natural slate on the older houses, and most repairs take hours, not days. When the nails, battens and felt have gone together the covering comes off, soft timber is cut out, and it goes back on breathable membrane and treated battens with a matched tile. For one loose hip, a blocked valley or a single drip on a bungalow ceiling, our page on roof repairs in Ashley Heath goes through each fault and its fix.
Garages, porches, rear extensions and the strip over a conservatory in felt, GRP fibreglass or EPDM rubber, with the deck looked at before the covering, then the falls, the upstands and the outlet. The abutment where a low garage or extension roof runs into the house wall is the single commonest leak on a bungalow, and it wants code rated lead cut so it can move.
Clearing moss, algae and debris, re-fixing what has dropped and renewing rainwater goods is ordinary work, and capping a rotten timber fascia in uPVC hides the rot and does not stop it. With the covering off, insulation, eaves ventilation and any condensation problem cost a fraction to sort, and Approved Document L sets the standard a renovated roof is expected to reach.
How it runs
Re-roofing a bungalow in Ashley Heath, start to finish
Thomas comes out, looks at the roof from the drive and the garden, goes up into the loft, and writes the price himself. A bungalow here is usually a hipped roof, which means a lot of ridge, hip and verge for the floor area it covers, so each of those gets its own line.
The written quote lists the scaffold, stripping out the old concrete or clay tiles, new battens and breathable membrane, the new covering, every junction with its lead flashing, and disposal. You deal with one company for the whole job.
Access is usually the easy part at Ashley Heath. Plots are open, drives are level, and a single storey eaves line takes a light scaffold round the house. The skip sits on your drive, off the road. The roof is never left open overnight, the garden is cleared of nails and broken tile every evening, and the old covering leaves with us. If a rotten rafter foot or a split wall plate shows up once the tiles are off, Thomas sends you a photograph and a price, and nothing more is done until you agree it.
Ashley Heath has no conservation area and just two listed entries, so re-covering like for like, repairs and a flush rooflight need no planning application, though replacing more than a quarter of the roof covering needs building control. Planning Portal guidance on roofs marks the limit, which is reached at a dormer or a raised ridge. The authority is Dorset Council, and on either of the two listed buildings listed building consent covers any work.
Cost
What sets the price of a bungalow roof
Our roof quotes have no square metre rate. A bungalow gives you the floor space of a two storey house under something like double the roof, with far more hip, ridge and verge per home. Those edges eat the hours.
The tiles already on it. Houses built in Ashley Heath in the 1970s and early 1980s mostly went up in concrete interlocking tiles over sarking felt. By now that felt can be brittle at the eaves, and the mortar bedding on the ridge and hips is often cracked. Whether the ridge is re-bedded or changed to a dry fixed system is a real line on the quote.
The weather side. The most exposed elevation here faces south west, and wind driven rain works at the verges and the tile edges rather than the middle of the slope. Fixings follow the British Standard for slating and tiling, so an older roof that was only nailed here and there needs more clips when it goes back on.
The platform. A single storey eaves means a lower, lighter scaffold than a house needs, but the work at height rules still set how it is built and how long it stands, so it is priced in the open.
Chimneys and junctions. Each chimney, valley and abutment is priced on its own, with the lead named.
Before you sign with anyone, ask whether the battens and membrane are being renewed or left, whether the ridge and hips are bedded or dry fixed, and what grade of lead is going on the chimney.
If it is leaking now
Rain getting through the roof of your home
If water is coming through a ceiling, put a bucket under it, keep away from any light fitting nearby and move what you can. Please do not get your own ladder out. A bungalow gutter looks low, but a fall from it onto a patio does real harm.
Phone us rather than filling in the form. The first visit is about making it dry: slipped tiles refixed, a cracked ridge re-bedded or a sheet fixed over the worst of it, and a look at the flashings and valleys to find where the water is really getting in. The permanent work is priced once it is safe. Scheduled work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm. If nobody picks up, leave a message and we will return it as soon as we can.
Worth knowing
Bungalow country, and what that does to a roof
More than half the homes in Ashley Heath are single storey, and that one fact sits behind most of the quotes we write. Same floor area as a house, roughly twice the roof. The extra tiles matter less than you would think.
What matters is that there is far more ridge, hip and verge per household, and the perimeter is where a covering of this age gives up first. So we look at the edges before the middle of a slope, and the honest answer here is more often edge work than a new roof.
The other half of it is what sits above your ceilings. A bungalow roof space runs over every room, not half of them, so anything done up there lands everywhere at once. If the covering is coming off anyway, that is the moment to bring insulation up to depth, clear the eaves so the air path is not stuffed with wool, and deal with condensation while the access is already paid for.
Who you are dealing with
The roofer you are actually dealing with
Ashley Heath is 7.1 miles from our base on Wolverton Road in Boscombe, and we roof across BH24 from Ashley Heath and Ashley itself to St Leonards and St Ives. Dorset Council handles planning and building control for these roads.
The firm is Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 15471719, so you can check us on Companies House before anyone arrives. It is Thomas Hannen's business, and Thomas is the one who looks at your roof and prices it. One verified customer gave us 10 out of 10 on Checkatrade. The site visit costs nothing, and neither does the itemised quote in writing. Before you book a visit in Ashley Heath, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.
Planning at a glance
Do you need planning permission in Ashley Heath?
Most repairs in Ashley Heath need no application at all. What decides whether a change to the outside of your house does is who the council is, whether a conservation area or a listing applies, and whether the place sits in a protected landscape.
| Question | In Ashley Heath |
|---|---|
| Who decides | Dorset Council is the planning authority for Ashley Heath. Dorset Council's heritage pages set out what it controls. |
| Conservation area | None covers Ashley Heath, so a like-for-like repair is ordinary maintenance. |
| Listed buildings | Yes, Ashley Heath has listed buildings. If yours is one, or stands in the grounds of one, work can need listed building consent. |
| Protected landscape | No National Park or National Landscape covers Ashley Heath. |
Questions
Questions about roofing in Ashley Heath
Over half the houses here are bungalows. Does that help?
Yes, and a bungalow roof in Ashley Heath changes the shape of the job. Bungalows are 52.2% of the stock in Ashley Heath, so most roofs here are wide, low and reachable from a modest scaffold, and access is the straightforward part. The work sits at the edges instead, because a spread out single storey roof carries more ridge, hip and verge than a two storey house covering the same rooms. That is where we look first.
On a low Ashley Heath bungalow, what can I check myself?
More than people think: stand back on the lawn and look along the ridge line: a dip or a gap between ridge tiles means the bedding has gone. Look at the verge for mortar sitting on the flower bed. Look for a tile out of line, and for staining running down from a fixing. All of it is visible from the lawn, without a ladder and without anyone on the roof.
Our house is seventies. Should the mortar ridge be replaced?
Usually with a dry system, yes. The busiest building period in Ashley Heath was the seventies and early eighties, and those roofs were finished with ridge and hip tiles bedded in sand and cement that is now around fifty years old. Bedding cracks, water gets behind it and the tile loosens. A mechanically fixed ridge screws down to a batten and vents the roof at the same time.
Where do the old tiles and battens actually go?
Into a skip on the drive, or a grab lorry if the drive will not take one. Terraced housing is under three per cent of Ashley Heath, so nearly every property has frontage of its own and the waste never has to cross a neighbour. Concrete tiles go for crushing, timber and felt are separated out, and old lead leaves with us. The drive gets swept and magnet swept before the scaffold comes down.
Does the sheltered side of the roof need doing too?
Not always at the same time. The weather here comes off the south west, and driven rain attacks edges and openings rather than the flat middle of a slope, so one elevation can be finished while the opposite side still has years in it. What decides it is the batten and felt underneath. If they have failed across the whole roof, splitting the job only buys a season or two.
Nearby, and next door
Roofing near Ashley Heath
Nearby places we also cover for roofing, with straight-line distances from Ashley Heath, and the other trades we offer in Ashley Heath itself.
Roofing nearby
Our other trades in Ashley Heath
Roofing guides
Concrete vs clay roof tiles: which is right? Planning, building regs or listed building consent Storm damage to a roof: the first 24 hoursEverything we do in West Moors Roofing, all areas Every area we cover
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