Roofing in Bere Regis
Repairs, dry ridge and verge, re-covers, flat roofs, leadwork and gutter work across Bere Regis and the BH20 villages. One point of contact throughout, and nothing left open overnight.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
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A leaking Bere Regis roof can nearly always be repaired, not replaced, and the covering is usually the last thing at fault. The one check people here miss is where the downpipes finish, because this ground moves when it gets wet.
Village roof trouble in Bere Regis tends to start with a gale, a stain or plain age. A tile has come off in a gale and there is one on the lawn. A brown ring has appeared on a bedroom ceiling, nearly always under a chimney or where an extension runs into the old roof. Or nobody has touched the roof since it was built and you want a straight answer on whether it has years left in it. If that ring under the chimney is wet and spreading today, phone 07435 839745 and we will tell you what to do before anyone is up a ladder.
We come out, survey it properly, put our head into the loft and photograph what is actually there. Then you are told which of the three you have: a repair that will hold, edge work that buys you years, or a covering that has finished. The site visit and the written itemised quote are both free.
The work
The covering is usually the last thing at fault
The covering is usually the last thing at fault. A slipped or cracked tile, a missing one after a gale, storm damage, and leak tracing: we find the point of entry instead of dressing the ceiling stain. For a single fault or a leak on its own, the detail is on our page for roof repairs in Bere Regis, and this page is about the whole roof. The village carries three coverings.
Plain tile in clay on the old cottages, natural slate where the Victorians added on, and concrete interlocking tile across everything built since the war. Stone slate is a Purbeck covering from further south and hardly appears here. Interlocking concrete tends to outlast its own nail or clip, so what has failed is a fixing or a junction.
Thatch, and what we will not take on. There is thatch in Bere Regis and we do not touch it. What we will take on is the tiled or slated roof next to it: the soakers and flashing where a tiled extension runs into a thatched main roof, and the rainwater goods underneath. For the thatch itself, a master thatcher.
Mortar bedding is the detail that gives out first on nearly every roof here. Once it cracks the ridge tiles start to rock and the verge loses its bedding, so we strip the mortar off and fit dry ridge and dry verge screwed onto a ventilated roll, the mechanical fixing BS 5534 expects. When the nails corrode, the batten ends soften and the underlay parts under your thumb, everything comes off and the roof goes back on breathable membrane and treated battens with a matched tile.
Flashings, soakers, valleys and abutments go in code rated lead sized so the sheet can expand without tearing, because very little water gets in through the middle of a slope. A downpipe that empties beside a wall rather than into a gully is a genuine problem on ground that shrinks and swells. With the covering off, insulation and eaves ventilation cost a fraction of the usual, and Approved Document L sets the standard a renovated roof is meant to reach.
How it runs
Re-roofing in the village core, step by step
Thomas comes out to look at the roof himself. He checks the slopes from the lane and the garden, goes into the loft to see the underside of the battens and the state of the old underlay, and then writes the quote.
Every part has its own line: the scaffold, stripping off the old roof, new battens and breathable membrane, the tiles or slates, each chimney, valley and abutment with its lead flashing, and the skip. Everything from the scaffold going up to the last ridge tile bedded sits on that one price.
Where a house in the old part of Bere Regis sits hard on the lane with no side way in, the scaffold stands on the footway or goes up at the back through the garden, and Thomas tells you which at the visit. The roof is left weathertight and the site swept every evening, and old material leaves with us. Should the stripped roof reveal rotten rafters or a failed valley board, Thomas photographs them, prices the repair and waits for your yes.
Much of the village core sits inside the Bere Regis Conservation Area, and there the look of the roof is controlled, so a change of covering or a new rooflight on the front slope needs checking with Dorset Council first. Outside it, an unlisted house can usually be re-covered like for like, with new rainwater goods, under the permitted development limits that Planning Portal guidance sets out. On a listed building, listed building consent applies whatever the work.
Cost
What moves the price of a roof in Bere Regis
A roof in Bere Regis has no rate per square metre. Two roofs the same size in this village can be priced very differently, for reasons you mostly cannot see from the lane.
The platform. A cottage fronting the street needs a scaffold that keeps the footway open, and one standing on the pavement needs the council's licence. A house set back behind a garden is simpler. The weeks it stands count as well as its height, and because the work at height rules govern it, it is priced as its own line.
The weather side. Slopes facing south west take the wind and driven rain. That is where tiles lift at the verge and eaves, and where a re-cover needs its fixings and verges done to the code of practice for slating and tiling rather than simply nailed back as before.
What is under the tiles. An older roof may have no underlay at all, or felt that has turned brittle. Rafters that have spread or a wall plate that has rotted add days, so Thomas looks from the loft before he prices.
Consent. In the conservation area or on a listed house, matching the original covering can mean handmade clay or natural slate, which costs more than a concrete tile and takes longer to source.
Ask any other roofer the same questions you would ask us. Is the scaffold, and any pavement licence, included? Are the battens and membrane being renewed or left? How are the verges and ridge being fixed?
If it is leaking now
Tiles off, or a drip through the bedroom ceiling
If water is coming through, put a bucket under it, move anything electrical and photograph the ceiling. Stay off ladders, especially in wind. Then ring rather than filling in the form.
Scheduled work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm, but a leak is different, so phone us, and if the phone goes unanswered we will ring you back as soon as we can. Making it safe comes first. Slipped or missing tiles are refixed, a sheet goes over the damage if the weather is still coming, and Thomas looks at the flashings and valleys to find where the water is really getting in. The permanent repair is priced after that.
Worth knowing
Where your downpipes finish matters here
The ground under Bere Regis is cohesive and it shrinks and swells with the weather. It takes up water through the winter and gives it back in a dry summer, and it changes volume doing it. That turns roof drainage into a structural question rather than only a damp one, which is not true everywhere we work.
So we look harder at rainwater goods here than the job appears to deserve. Every downpipe wants to finish in a gully with a positive outfall to a drain, not on a splash block beside a wall and not into a soakaway sitting next to a foundation. A gutter that runs over on the same corner every winter is soaking one patch of ground and drying it out again every summer, year after year. Approved Document H covers where that water is meant to go.
The practical version: when the gutters are cleared, have the gullies below them rodded at the same time. It is the cheaper half of the job and the half that usually gets left.
Who you are dealing with
Thomas Hannen, pricing roofs from Boscombe
Bere Regis is 17 miles from our base in Boscombe, out along the A35 in BH20, and we cover the village and the roads towards Wool, Winterborne Kingston and Wareham. Dorset Council handles planning, listed building consent and building control here.
The firm is Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 15471719, which you can look up on Companies House. It is Thomas Hannen's business, and Thomas is the one who climbs up, looks at your roof and prices it himself. A verified customer has given us 10 out of 10 on Checkatrade. The site visit is free, and so is the written quote, with every item listed. Before you book a visit in Bere Regis, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.
Planning at a glance
Do you need planning permission in Bere Regis?
Most repairs in Bere Regis 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 Bere Regis |
|---|---|
| Who decides | Dorset Council is the planning authority for Bere Regis. Dorset Council's heritage pages set out what it controls. |
| Conservation area | Yes: Bere Regis Conservation Area. Check whether your street is inside the boundary before changing anything visible. |
| Listed buildings | Yes, there are listed buildings in and around Bere Regis. If yours is one, work can need listed building consent. |
| Protected landscape | No National Park or National Landscape covers Bere Regis. |
Questions
Questions about roofing in Bere Regis
A conservation area and plenty of listed houses. How do they differ?
Because the two are separate systems. Bere Regis has a conservation area of its own, the Bere Regis Conservation Area, which Dorset Council designated over the village core, and there are forty three listed entries in the parish, from the church of St John the Baptist outwards.
If your building is on that list, consent is needed for work that changes its character, wherever it stands. If it is not listed but sits in the village core, the conservation area controls changes to how the roof looks, so a like for like repair is fine and a change of covering needs checking first. Further out, ordinary permitted development applies to the roof.
What does a roofer look for on an old village house?
Where the covering meets something else. On the older buildings around Bere Regis the failures are almost never in the middle of a slope: they are at a chimney, a valley, a lead abutment against a raised gable, or a verge where the bedding has washed out. We check the loft for daylight and for rafter ends that have been wet against a wall plate, then work outward to the flashings.
Our loft conversion has stalled over Poole Harbour. Why?
Nutrient neutrality: Bere Regis drains into the Poole Harbour catchment, and any scheme that adds overnight accommodation has to show it is not adding nutrient load before Dorset Council can grant consent. A bedroom in the roof counts. Nothing about re-covering, repairing, insulating or renewing gutters engages it, which is why a re-roof goes ahead while the conversion drawings sit waiting.
Which elevation takes the beating out here?
The one looking south west: open country around Bere Regis leaves the exposed face with nothing to slow the wind, and driven rain finds edges and openings rather than the body of a slope, so verges, ridge ends and anything abutting a wall on that side go first. When someone tells us the leak only happens in a storm and not in steady rain, that is the elevation we start on.
Where does the water off the roof end up here?
That is worth knowing before we touch the gutters. The ground through Bere Regis is cohesive and rated for shrink and swell, so rainwater discharged beside a wall works on the foundation as well as the wall. If a downpipe runs to a soakaway too near the building, or into a gully that has silted up, we would rather sort that while the scaffold is standing than come back for it.
Nearby, and next door
Roofing near Bere Regis
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