Roofing in Blandford Forum

On a terrace the leak is usually the party wall. Terraces are 31.1% of the housing here, and on a terrace the leak is very often at the party wall: the abutment where your slope meets next door's, or the valley behind a back addition. That is leadwork, not tiling, which is worth knowing before you pay somebody to re-bed a ridge that was never the problem. Repairs are slipped, cracked and missing tiles, storm damage, and leaks traced back to where water genuinely enters rather than patched where the stain shows.

Slate and plain clay tile. Close to one house in five in the town predates 1919, and those roofs are natural slate or plain clay tile on battens, often with old lime torching crumbling out underneath. Slate itself rarely wears out; the nails rust through first, so you get a run of slipped slates across one course. One slate comes back on a tingle. Once a slope has gone the roof wants stripping and re-laying, sound slates sorted and matched second hand ones making up the shortfall. There is no stone slate on the ordinary housing here.

Well over a third of the town went up between 1945 and 1982, mostly concrete interlocking tile, and the tile outlives what holds it down. What finishes these roofs is nail fatigue, soft batten ends and underlay that tears as soon as you touch it. The covering comes off, soft rafter feet are replaced, and it goes back on breathable membrane and treated battens with a matched tile. Where the mortar bedding has cracked and the tiles are starting to rock, we convert to dry ridge and dry verge screwed onto a ventilated roll, the mechanical fixing BS 5534 expects, which ventilates the roof space along the ridge at the same time.

Back additions, dormers, garages and porches in felt, GRP fibreglass or EPDM rubber, all of which last when the deck is sound and the falls, upstands and outlet are right, so we look at the deck first. Chimney flashings, soakers, valleys and abutments go back in code rated lead, cut short enough to move without splitting. Older properties also carry lead lined parapet gutters, hidden from the ground and the most expensive thing here to ignore.

A fair share of the leaks we attend turn out to be a gutter running over or a downpipe discharging into nothing. On a terrace the gutter runs continuously across several houses, so a blockage two doors along is your wet wall. North facing slopes hold the moss and algae that wash down and pack it, and clearing that debris heads off the rotted fascia below.

With the covering off, insulation, eaves ventilation and any condensation problem are far cheaper to sort while the access is already paid for, and Approved Document L sets the standard a renovated roof is expected to reach.

Getting to it. In Blandford this decides more of the price than the roof does. A town terrace has no side access, so the scaffold either goes up at the front over a public footway, which the council licences, or the platform is fed through the house. How long it stands matters as much as its size, and the work at height rules are why it is a priced line rather than an extra.

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.

Two hundred and nine entries in the parish are listed, and a good part of the town sits inside the Blandford St Mary and Bryanston Conservation Area. Both are misunderstood in the same direction: people assume they cannot touch the roof, then find out afterwards that they could have.

What a conservation area controls is appearance. Repairing a slate roof with slate, or a plain tile roof with plain tile, is maintenance, needs no application, and is what we would be recommending anyway. What cannot happen quietly is a change of material, so it is the slate roof coming back in concrete tile because that quote was cheaper that gets stopped.

A listed building is stricter again, and consent there covers the work itself, repairs included. Send us the address first. We check it against listed building consent before pricing, and where the covering is controlled we price the matched material rather than a cheaper roof you cannot have.

Just over fifteen miles up the Stour from us, covering Blandford Forum, Blandford St Mary, Bryanston and the DT11 addresses around them. 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.