Roofing in Broadstone

Nail sickness on the 1950s and 1960s stock. Nearly two thirds of Broadstone went up between 1945 and 1982, a quarter of the town in the late 1950s and early 1960s alone. Those concrete tile roofs were nailed with galvanised nails that rust from the head down. The tile is still fine; the nail holding it is not, which is why a whole slope starts letting go within a year or two of the first one moving. Where the battens and underlay are sound the answer is re-fixing rather than re-covering, and we will tell you which of the two you have. BS 5534 sets out how a covering should be mechanically fixed for its exposure.

Ridge, hip and verge, which is most of a bungalow roof. Two in five homes here are bungalows, and a bungalow has roughly twice the roof of a house with the same floor area, most of it edge. Hipped ends mean long hip runs, and every one of them is mortar bedding that cracks, washes out and drops. We convert to a dry fix system: a dry ridge screwed to a ventilated roll, dry verge units closing the gables, and hips mechanically fixed. It is the single most useful thing you can do to a roof of this age here.

A lot of the post-war building here sits at a shallow pitch, and pitch decides what covering is allowed. Some tiles cannot be laid below their minimum, and a plain tile will not go on a roof designed for an interlocking concrete tile. Where someone has already done it, water tracks back under the laps in driving rain and the leak looks like it comes from nowhere. On a strip we check the batten gauge against the tile, the underlay at the laps and eaves, and any rafter that has been taking water quietly.

Sixty years of rear additions, garages, porches and dormers, most of them flat and on their second or third covering. Felt, GRP fibreglass and EPDM rubber all last where the deck is sound and the falls and upstands are right. Chimney flashings, soakers, valleys and abutments go back in code rated lead. Then the rainwater side: clearing moss and debris, correcting a fall that has dropped, and renewing split gutters and downpipes. On ground that shrinks and swells, a downpipe emptying beside a foundation is a structural question rather than just a damp one. With 42% of the town in bungalows the loft is large, easy to get at and the best value insulation job we do, and Approved Document L sets what a renovated roof is expected to reach.

No rate per square metre. A 1960s hipped bungalow, a semi on a corner plot and a 1980s detached house are three different jobs before a tile moves, and the platform changes on each. Some roofs come off a tower, most want a scaffold, and how long it stands matters as much as its size, which is why the work at height rules make it a priced line and not an optional extra. Chimneys, valleys and abutments are priced one at a time. Ask any quote whether scaffold is in, whether battens and membrane are renewed or covered over, and who pays for the skip.

Broadstone sits on cohesive ground with a significant shrink-swell rating. Clay-rich soil of that kind takes up water and expands, then dries out and contracts, and it does it seasonally. Where that happens right beside a foundation, the movement is a structural question rather than just a damp one, which is why cracked render, sticking doors and stepped cracking in brickwork are more common around here than the age of the houses would suggest.

A roof contributes to that more than people realise. A blocked gutter, a split downpipe or a shoe discharging onto the soil next to a wall puts a concentrated, seasonal volume of water into exactly the ground that reacts to it.

On a bungalow, with twice the roof area per household draining through the same number of downpipes, the volumes are not small. So when we look at guttering here we are not only thinking about the wall getting wet. We check where the water actually ends up, and whether it is being delivered into the ground beside the house or taken away from it.

We cover Broadstone, Dunyeats, Clayford, Merley Park and out towards Corfe Mullen and Canford Magna, broadly BH18, under BCP Council. 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.