Roofing in Breamore

Plain clay tile and handmade peg tile. The staple job. Old tiles are hung rather than nailed through every course, often on riven laths, and half the work is sorting: the sound tiles come off, get graded and go back on the elevation that faces the road, and only the shortfall is bought in. Matching a weathered handmade tile matters more than matching a new one, so we lay a sample out on the ground before it goes up. A concrete tile is the wrong answer on a building like this even where somebody has already fitted one.

No hot works within reach of the straw. We do not thatch and we do not sub-contract it out. We do work alongside it, and the rule is no torch-on felt, no lead burning and no grinder near the straw. Lead is bossed and welted cold, flat roofs go down in a cold applied system or EPDM rubber rather than anything with a flame, and any scaffold that runs over a thatched slope gets boarded protection before a boot goes near it.

Where a roof was re-covered in slate at some point, the usual fault is nail sickness rather than the slate: the fixings corrode, the slates creep down and you get a run of slipped ones on the same course. Sound slate is stripped, sorted and re-hung on new copper or stainless fixings, with the sarking and battens replaced where they have gone soft.

Where appearance is controlled by the conservation area, a dry verge with a visible plastic edge is exactly the change that gets picked up. We either renew the mortar bedding in a lime mix that stays softer than the tile, or use a dry ridge system with the fixing concealed, which still gives the mechanical hold BS 5534 asks for, and we say which we are proposing on the quote.

Brick and flint gables, tall chimneys and long swept valleys are where the water actually gets in, so flashings, soakers, abutments and secret gutters go in code rated lead cut short enough to expand without splitting. Cast iron gutters and downpipes are usually worth repairing rather than replacing, and we clear moss by hand instead of pressure washing an old clay tile to death. In the loft, insulation and eaves ventilation are dealt with while the covering is off, though an old roof wants to breathe, so Approved Document L is met without sealing the roof space shut.

No rate per square metre: the area is the easiest thing to measure and the least useful thing to know. The lanes here are narrow with soft verges and a lot of the buildings sit behind a yard or a gate, so where a scaffold lorry can turn and where a skip can legally stand is settled before anything is priced, and a scaffold foot on a verge gets boarded.

The work at height rules are why the platform is a priced line. Ask what grade of lead is going on the chimney, and whether battens and membrane are renewed or covered over.

Breamore has its own conservation area, and what that controls is appearance. A repair in the same material, to the same detail, at the same pitch is maintenance and needs nothing from anybody. Change the covering, change the ridge or verge detail from mortar to something visibly modern, or put a rooflight on a slope that faces the road, and you are into a different conversation, because permitted development rights are thinner here than the general limits in the Planning Portal guidance.

The practical move is simple and it costs nothing. Photograph the roof from the road before anything comes off, and make sure the quote names the covering, the ridge detail and the lead code rather than saying "renew as existing". That single page is what settles the question if it is ever asked, and it is the same page that tells you your quote and somebody else's are for the same job.