Roofing in Bransgore

Cement fillets are the first thing to come off. Somebody ran mortar where lead belongs, it cracked inside two winters, and water has been going in behind it ever since. The abutment where an extension roof runs into a wall, the valley between two pitches, the soaker course along a lean-to and the flashing round a chimney all go back in code rated lead, cut so it can move without splitting.

Ridge, hips and verges. Two houses in five here are detached, and a detached roof has a lot of outside for its footprint, all of it originally bedded in mortar. Once the bedding cracks the tiles start to move and a gale finds them. We take it off and lay a dry fix system instead, dry ridge and dry verge screwed to a vented roll, the mechanical fixing BS 5534 asks for, measured by the metre of edge.

Post-war Bransgore is concrete tile, nearly all of it interlocking, and half the parish went up between 1945 and 1982. The cottages on the lanes are plain tile, clay tile and natural slate on battens over felt with no sarking board behind. Where a cottage is thatched we leave that to a thatcher and take on the tiled wing and the lead between the two. We follow a leak back to the point water is getting in rather than sealing the spot where the stain appeared, and on a roof this size the two are often metres apart. If the rest of the roof is sound and you have one slipped tile or one leak to chase, that job is on its own page, roof repairs in Bransgore.

Rusted nails, soft batten ends and an underlay that tears when you touch it arrive together, and once they have there is no repair worth buying. The lot comes off, wet timber is cut out, and the roof goes back on breathable membrane and treated battens with a matched tile. Ask for the re-roof figure alongside the repair figure and decide from the pair.

Long elevations with two downpipes between them mean one blockage floods the whole run, and it comes over the front of the gutter onto the fascia rather than out of the end. We check where the foot of the downpipe goes as well as what falls in at the top, because this ground shrinks and swells with the seasons. With the covering off, insulation depth and eaves ventilation are the cheapest they will ever be, and Approved Document L sets the standard a renovated roof is expected to reach.

What is on it now. Concrete interlocking tiles cover most of the village's seventies and eighties housing. They are heavy and they last, and putting the same profile back is a simpler job than matching the clay plain tiles or natural slate on the older cottages. Changing to a smaller or lighter tile changes the batten gauge and the fixings, so it is priced as its own line.

What is under the tiles. Roofs of that age were laid over bitumen felt underlay, and by now it has often gone brittle and torn where it dips into the gutter at the eaves. Once the felt has failed, patching tiles does not fix it. The covering comes off and it becomes new battens and membrane.

The edges, not the middle. Weather here comes mostly from the south west, and it works at verges, ridges and abutments rather than the open slope. Old mortar bedded ridges and verges on those gables are often where a leak began. Rebedding them, or changing to a mechanically fixed dry system as the code of practice for slating and tiling now expects, moves the hours. Chimneys and valleys are priced one at a time, because that is where the leadwork goes.

Getting up there. A bungalow needs a lower scaffold, but often all the way round. The work at height rules are why it is a separate line.

Test any other quote against ours on the details. Are the battens and underlay being renewed or left? How will the ridge and verges be fixed? Is the scaffold in the price?

The ground under Bransgore is cohesive, and it shrinks and swells with the seasons. It gives up water through a dry summer and takes it back through the winter, and it changes volume while it does it. That turns one ordinary bit of roofing into a structural question: where the foot of your downpipe actually discharges.

Into a gully connected to a drain is fine. Onto a soakaway close to the wall, or straight onto the ground beside it, feeds everything landing on half a roof into the soil next to a foundation that is already moving with the weather. On cohesive ground a soakaway will often fail its percolation test anyway, which is why Approved Document H asks for a positive outfall where the ground will not take it. Get the outfall wrong and new rainwater goods only deliver the same water to the same place faster.

The roof is looked at and priced by Thomas Hannen, whose business this is. He comes out from the base in Boscombe, 5.6 miles away, to houses right across Bransgore, from the roads off Ringwood Road out to Neacroft, Waterditch, Thorney Hill and Sopley.

New Forest District Council is the council for all of it. The company is Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales under company number 15471719, so you can look it up before anyone climbs onto your roof. One verified customer on Checkatrade scored the work 10 out of 10. You pay nothing for the visit or for the itemised written quote. Before you book a visit in Bransgore, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.

Most repairs in Bransgore 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.