Roofing in Ashmore

Matching the covering, before anything else. Where your roof is plain clay tile or natural slate, the material is the first thing settled and the last thing to compromise on. We sort as we strip, so sound tile goes back on the elevation facing the lane, and we look for reclaimed before new to fill a run.

Plastic verge is the one thing we talk you out of. Mortar bedding is the detail that goes first on an old roof, and re-bedding it only buys the same lifespan over again. BS 5534 expects ridges and hips to be mechanically fixed, and a dry ridge system sits underneath a traditional ridge tile where nothing shows from the ground. A plastic dry verge reads wrong from the road in a conservation area village, and a clipped undercloak with a fixed tile and a half does the same job quietly.

Repairs are slipped, cracked and missing tiles, storm damage, a ridge tile that rocks under your hand, and leaks traced back to where water genuinely enters. For one slipped slate, a cracked clay tile or a single leak on its own, see our page on roof repairs in Ashmore. What has usually finished is a fixing or a junction rather than the covering. Lift a slate on an older Ashmore roof and there is often no membrane under it at all, only hand cut battens and daylight. That is not a fault in itself. What finishes the roof is the nails: once they have rusted through, slates slip one at a time and every one is a separate visit.

When nails, battens and underlay have gone together the covering comes off and goes back on breathable membrane and treated battens, with soft rafter feet cut out and stainless nails and clips where exposure asks for them. A cement fillet where a lead flashing should be is the leak to suspect first in these villages, and it cracks because mortar cannot move and lead can. Flashings, soakers, valleys and abutments go back in code rated lead.

Rear extensions, garages and outbuildings in felt, GRP fibreglass or EPDM rubber, with the deck looked at before the falls, upstands and outlet. Cast iron rainwater goods are still on plenty of these houses and are usually worth repairing rather than swapping for plastic on a frontage, and we do not pressure wash a clay tile. With the covering off, insulation and eaves ventilation are far cheaper to deal with, and Approved Document L sets the standard a renovated roof is expected to reach.

We do not price by the square metre. On an older roof, what can be kept matters far more than the area.

Saving what is there. Slate or handmade clay tile that is still sound can be stripped, sorted and relaid, and that changes the cost of a re-cover more than anything. Whatever is short is made up with reclaimed material, bought when a matching batch comes up. It is not something you order from a list.

Lead and junctions. Chimneys, valleys and abutments are priced one by one. A stack on an old roof often has cement fillets where there should be lead, and putting soakers and stepped flashings back is proper work that takes hours.

Exposure. High, open downland catches the wind, and the edges of a roof are where it lifts tiles. Fixing to the current code of practice for slating and tiling means more clips and nails at verges and eaves than an old roof ever had.

The lane. No room for a lorry, a skip that has to sit on your own ground and materials carried the last stretch by hand all go into the access line. The work at height rules are why the scaffold is priced openly, and here it may stand a little longer.

Ask any other roofer what grade of lead goes on the chimney, how much of the old covering is being reused, and whether the battens and membrane are renewed or left.

Ashmore Conservation Area covers the village, and what it controls is appearance. For a roof that has one practical consequence. Repairing or re-covering like for like is maintenance: the same tile, the same slate, the same profile, and nobody has to apply for anything. Swapping a clay tile roof for concrete interlocking, or a slate roof for something that only passes for slate at thirty feet, is a change of appearance, and that is the decision somebody can refuse.

So the covering is the first conversation we have, not the last. The village also carries a good number of listed entries, and on a listed building the roof needs consent whether the material changes or not. If you are not certain which of those your house is, send the address and we will find out before anything is ordered.

Most repairs in Ashmore 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.