Roofing in Boldre
Repairs, dry ridge and verge, re-covers, flat roofs, leadwork and rainwater goods across Boldre, Pilley and Portmore.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
A like for like re-cover on an unlisted Boldre house needs no planning permission, even inside the National Park. The question worth asking here is not what goes on the roof, it is where the water goes once it leaves the downpipe.
Three calls come out of Boldre more than any others. A gale has taken a tile off and a damp patch is spreading across a bedroom ceiling. Mortar has started dropping off the ridge onto the path. Or the house has changed hands and nobody can say when the roof was last touched.
Boldre is not a street. It is the church, Pilley and the lanes towards Portmore, so every roof gets judged on what it is rather than on what the neighbours have. We come out, get on the roof, put our head into the loft and photograph what is there. The survey ends with you told which of three you have: a repair that will hold, edge work that buys you years, or a covering that has finished. Site visit and written quote both free.
The work
The stain on a ceiling is rarely under the hole
The stain on a ceiling is rarely under the hole. A leak gets chased to its entry point before anything is fixed. Most of what stands in the parish went up after the war and through the 1980s, so concrete interlocking tile fills the diary. Cottages along the lanes are different animals: plain tile, clay tile or natural slate, battens over felt, nothing like a sarking board underneath. Stone slate is not a Hampshire covering and we will say so if a quote claims otherwise. Thatch belongs to a thatcher, and ours ends at the tiling and the flashing that runs up to it.
Ridge, hips and verges. On a roof of that vintage the tiles are generally fine and the mortar holding the edges down is not. It cracks, water gets behind it, frost opens it further, and eventually a hip tile is sitting on nothing much. Rather than re-bed a detail that has already failed once, we take it off and put a dry ridge and dry verge back, screwed through into a ventilated roll. That is the mechanically fixed edge BS 5534 calls for, and it ventilates the apex of the loft as a by-product.
Rusted nails, batten ends gone soft and an underlay that tears in your fingers tend to arrive as a set. Everything comes off, rafter feet that have sat wet get cut back to sound timber, then treated battens over a breathable membrane, a matched tile and stainless nails through the perimeter courses. Have it priced beside the repair before you decide.
Garages, rear extensions and porches in felt, GRP fibreglass or EPDM rubber, where a soft deck, a fall running the wrong way or an outlet sitting proud of the finished level will finish any of the three early, so the deck gets opened before a covering is discussed. Chimney flashings, soakers, valleys and the abutment where an extension butts into the original slope go in code rated lead, run in short enough lengths to expand without tearing.
Shaded lanes mean moss and algae on the north slopes, and what washes off packs the gutter and the valley beneath it, so clearing debris is maintenance rather than repair, and low runs come off a tower rather than a scaffold. With the covering off, insulation, eaves ventilation and a long standing condensation problem can all be dealt with for very little, and Approved Document L is the standard a renovated roof is meant to reach.
How it runs
From your call to a written price
The same team start and finish, and the written price separates scaffold, strip out, battens, membrane, the covering and each junction.
Boldre has no conservation area, and planning here is the New Forest National Park Authority, not the district council. On an unlisted house a repair, a like for like re-cover, new rainwater goods and rooflights sit inside ordinary householder permitted development, provided nothing stands more than 150mm above the roof plane and the limits Planning Portal guidance sets out are met. A dormer is the exception, since enlarging a roof is not permitted development on National Park land. Eleven entries in the parish are listed, so we check the address on the National Park Authority's property map first.
Cost
What decides the price of a Boldre roof
The lane, then the platform. No rate per square metre: the area is the easiest thing to measure and tells you the least. Access in Boldre is decided by the lane rather than by the house. Some properties have a drive with room for a scaffold lorry. Others sit down a track too narrow for one, and the platform is unloaded short and barrowed in.
How many days a scaffold is booked matters as much as how big it is, and since this is work at height it is a priced line. Ask what grade of lead is going on the chimney and whether the underlay is renewed.
If it is leaking now
Water coming in today
Ring rather than use the form; water coming in goes to the front of the queue. Get a bucket under the stain and look along the ridge and gable verge from the ground. If it shows near a chimney or a valley, say so on the phone, because it changes what we load. The phone is answered 24 hours for emergencies; scheduled work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm.
Worth knowing
Where the roof water ends up matters here
The ground under most of Boldre is cohesive and has a significant shrink and swell rating. It gives up water and contracts through a dry summer, then takes it back and swells through a wet winter. Ground beside a wall that is repeatedly soaked moves more, and at a different time, than ground that is not.
So a gutter that overflows in the same corner every winter, or a downpipe discharging onto a flowerbed at the foot of a wall, is putting a concentrated load of water into the one place you least want movement. That is why we follow rainwater goods to the end here rather than stopping at the gutter.
Where a downpipe runs into nothing in particular the answer is usually a positive outfall rather than a new soakaway, because a soakaway in this ground has to pass a percolation test and often will not. Approved Document H sets out what is expected, and it is cheap to sort while a scaffold is up for something else.
Who you are dealing with
A local firm you can check
About fifteen miles from us, covering Boldre, Pilley, Portmore and the SO41 addresses out towards Lymington and Brockenhurst, with the New Forest National Park Authority for planning and New Forest District Council for building control. 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.
Questions
Boldre questions we get asked
Does the park authority care about a like for like re-roof in Boldre?
Not usually. Boldre sits under the New Forest National Park Authority, and putting the same covering back in the same way is maintenance rather than development, so nobody needs to see it. The moment the roof line, the material or the number of openings changes, it becomes something the authority will look at, and in the park a change visible from a public road is judged on how it sits in the landscape.
The house is eighties. Is the ridge mortar the problem?
Almost certainly. Nearly a third of Boldre dates from the 1980s and over four in ten homes went up between 1983 and 2008, so the standard roof around here is interlocking tile with a sand and cement ridge that is now forty odd years old and cracking. You will find mortar on the ground under the gable end. Refixing the ridge dry solves it without touching the tiles.
The same corner of gutter spills over every winter. Why?
Something is holding water where it should be running. On a Boldre roof the usual causes are a fall that has dropped where a bracket has pulled, moss washed down off a north facing slope into the outlet, or a gutter sized for a smaller roof than the one above it. It matters because the ground here shrinks and swells, and a corner that is soaked every winter never sits still.
We are mid terrace. Can you do our section alone?
Yes, and it is a common job here. Terraced and semi detached homes together are over half of Boldre, so most roofs run on past the party wall into next door. We strip to the party line, build the abutment properly and weather the joint with lead rather than a cement fillet, which is what usually fails where someone has done half a roof before. Your neighbour will need to know about the scaffold.
Is there a wrong time of year to start?
Mortar work is the only part that really cares. Bedding will not cure in a hard frost, so between December and February we either move the ridge and verge to dry fixed systems or wait for a settled spell. Stripping, battening, felting and tiling carry on through winter behind sheeting. The exposed face at Boldre looks south west, so what stops a day here is wind far more often than cold.
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Send the postcode and what you have noticed. We come out, get on the roof, and put an itemised price in writing.