Roofing in Barton on Sea

The salt goes for the nails, not the tile. Barton on Sea runs along the clifftop, and the salt, strongest on the seafront roads, goes for the metal rather than the covering. Nails and clips corrode from the outside in, so a roof can look sound while what holds it down has gone. Stainless steel or silicon bronze on the seaward slopes, and we say so on the quote.

Ridge, hip and verge. On this stock the edges fail long before the slopes. At 42.0% bungalows the same footprint is spread over one floor, so there is far more edge per house than on anything two storey, and edge is what fails. Mortar bedding cracks, a hip tile rocks, a verge loses its fillet and the wind gets underneath. We convert to a dry fixed system screwed onto a ventilated roll, the mechanical fixing BS 5534 asks for, with dry verge units at the gable. It is priced by the metre of edge.

Repairs are slipped, cracked and missing tiles, storm damage and leaks chased back to where water genuinely enters rather than patched where the stain shows. Mostly concrete interlocking tile from the late fifties and sixties in Barton on Sea, with plain clay tile and natural slate on the older houses. Once the nails, battens and underlay have gone together the covering comes off, soft rafter feet are cut out, and it goes back on breathable membrane and treated battens with a matched tile. There is no sarking board under a roof of this age, so the membrane and the batten gauge are the whole of the substrate. If it is one loose hip, a dormer that leaks or a single slipped tile, that belongs on our page for roof repairs in Barton on Sea.

Flat roofs over the attached garage, the rear extension and the porch, in felt, GRP fibreglass or EPDM rubber, with a corner of the deck opened before anything is quoted. Fewer chimneys on a bungalow than you would think and far more abutments, because every flat roofed extension meets a tiled slope or a wall somewhere, and that junction is where the leaks usually start. Code rated lead, cut so it can move without splitting.

Low eaves and long gutter runs make clearing debris easy and neglect expensive, since a gutter running over rots the fascia and soffit behind it. If we find cement rainwater goods on an older house we stop and tell you to have them tested rather than breaking them up. 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.

You will not get a rate per square metre from us. Barton is mostly post-war bungalows and chalet bungalows, with detached houses and blocks of flats in between, and the same area of roof prices very differently across them.

Edge, not area. A bungalow carries its whole footprint as roof, so there is more roof per room than on a two storey house. A hipped bungalow also has far more ridge, hips and verge than a plain gable ended box. Those are measured in metres and priced run by run, and on an edge job that length moves the figure more than anything else.

What the tiles are sitting on. Plenty of roofs from this era carry concrete interlocking tiles over the original felt, and old felt goes brittle at the eaves. If the battens and underlay are renewed, you are buying a proper re-roof. If new tiles go over old battens, you are not, and the quote should say which.

Salt on the seaward slope. This close to the cliff, salt air eats at nails, clips and any plain steel, starting from the edges. We specify fixings that stand up to it on the exposed side, and we set the verges and ridge on the south west elevation to take driven rain, following the British Standard for slating and tiling.

The platform. A tower at the eaves costs less than a full scaffold, but it is still work at height, and the work at height rules are why it is a line of its own.

Ask any other roofer whether the battens and underlay are being renewed or covered over, what the nails and clips are made of on the seaward slope, and whether the tower or scaffold is in the price.

Two in five dwellings here are bungalows, 42% of the housing, and it changes the arithmetic on most roofs. The same living space sits under roughly twice the roof area of a two storey house, with far more ridge, hip and verge per household, so there is a great deal more edge to keep fixed and a full re-cover costs more than the size of the house suggests.

For a Barton on Sea bungalow the access is cheap, so the survey is honest: we can see all of the roof properly rather than guessing at a slope from the ground. And the loft is enormous relative to the house, so it is losing more heat than the same loft on a semi, and it is the one thing worth sorting while the covering is off and the platform is already paid for.

Most repairs in Barton on Sea 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.