Roofing in Bryanston

Slate and plain tile repairs. Slipped, cracked and missing tiles, storm damage, and leaks traced back to where water genuinely enters rather than patched at the stain. Nearly a fifth of the housing here predates 1919, and on a natural slate roof of that age the slate outlives its nails, so slates arrive on the lawn while the covering itself is still sound. A handful can be re-hung. When they come down across the whole slope the fixings have gone, not the slate. On a strip the covering comes off, soft rafter ends and batten are cut out, and it goes back on breathable membrane and treated battens. Sound slate is sorted and re-laid on the elevation that faces the road, and a clay plain tile is matched to what came off rather than to a catalogue. Ridges and hips are screwed down to BS 5534 rather than bedded in mortar. Most of these roofs have no sarking board, so the underlay is doing all of the work.

Parapet and valley gutters. On the older and larger buildings the rainwater never reaches a gutter at the eaves. It runs along a lead lined channel behind a parapet to an outlet, and when that outlet blocks the water goes through the wall head instead. We clear it, find where the lead has split or the fall has gone flat, and re-line the section that needs it. There are a lot of stacks on the older houses here and they are where the leaks are: flashings, soakers, valleys and the abutments where a roof runs into a wall, renewed in code rated lead cut into short enough lengths that it can move without splitting, and the flaunching made good at the top.

More of the settlement is post-war than period, with the largest cohort going up in the 1970s and early 1980s. Those terraces and semis, and a third of the housing here is terraced, carry concrete interlocking tile with mortar bedding at every edge, and mortar is a fixing with a shelf life. We convert to a dry fix system: dry ridge screwed over a ventilated roll, dry verge clipped down the gable.

Rear additions, dormer tops, porches and garages come in felt, GRP fibreglass or EPDM rubber, and the deck comes first, then the falls, the upstands and the outlet. Cast iron gutters and downpipes are still up on a lot of these houses and are often worth repairing rather than ripping off. Clearing moss, algae and debris is maintenance, and it heads off the rainwater damage that follows. There is thatch on this patch and we say so rather than have a go: we will sort the tiled or slated part of a building that adjoins it, and the leadwork where the two meet. Insulation, eaves ventilation and condensation are far cheaper to deal with while the covering is off, and Approved Document L sets the standard a renovated roof is expected to reach.

No rate per square metre. Lanes here are narrow with soft verges and estate walls, so where a scaffold and a skip can stand is settled before anything else is priced. How long a platform stands matters as much as its size, which is why the work at height rules make it a priced line. Chimneys, parapet gutters and abutments are priced one at a time, because that is where the leadwork hours go. Ask whether the scaffold is in the price, whether battens and membrane are renewed or covered over, and who pays for the skip.