Roofing in Corfe Castle

Stone slate slopes. Purbeck stone hung in diminishing courses, the biggest at the eaves and the smallest at the ridge. Individual slates are lifted and re-hung; whole slopes are stripped and relaid where the oak pegs or the nails have gone, while the stone itself is fine.

Sound stone is sorted and put back, and only delaminated pieces are made up from salvage, which is why a stone roof takes longer to programme than a tiled one. We do not point a stone roof and we do not seal one. Stone is several times heavier than a concrete tile, so putting it back on a slope re-covered in something lighter years ago is a structural question about the rafters before it is a roofing one.

Not every roof here is stone. The later cottages and the twentieth century houses at the edges carry plain clay tile, natural slate and concrete interlocking tile, and those get the ordinary treatment: storm damage made good, ridge and verge screwed down under BS 5534 instead of re-bedded in mortar that will crack again.

Thatch, which we will not take on. There is thatch in Corfe Castle. We do not touch it and we will tell you so. What we will do is the leadwork, the flashing and the rainwater goods where a stone or tiled slope abuts a thatched one, a junction that leaks far more often than the thatch itself.

Older slopes here often have no membrane at all and were torched with lime on the underside instead, and some slate sits on sarking boards. Perished felt, soft batten ends and a wet rafter foot are what we look for from inside first, because the strip is priced on what is under the covering. A village with a hundred and thirty four listed entries has a lot of stacks, and on an old stone roof the stack is where water most often finds a way in: flaunching, flashings, soakers, valleys and abutments in code rated lead cut so it can move without splitting. Cement fillets in place of lead are a false economy and we replace them.

Rear additions and outbuildings come in felt, GRP fibreglass or EPDM rubber, with the deck checked before the falls, upstands and outlet. Cast iron gutters can usually be repaired and kept, and moss on stone is not automatically a fault and never gets pressure washed. On a building whose appearance is controlled, the roof space is often the only place you can genuinely improve things, and Approved Document L sets the standard a renovated roof is expected to reach.

A roof in Corfe Castle has no rate per square metre. Two roofs of the same size can be very different jobs, and the difference is mostly the covering, the timbers under it and how the scaffold gets in.

Stone or tile. A Purbeck stone slate roof is heavy and laid in diminishing courses. Every slate that comes off is sorted, dressed and set aside to go back on, and the shortfall is made up with matching reclaimed or new stone. Finding that stone is part of the price. A clay or concrete tile roof on a later house strips and re-lays far more quickly.

What is under it. Older roofs in Corfe Castle often have no underlay at all, or a torched underside, and rafters that have carried stone for generations. New battens and a breathable membrane are straightforward. A sagging rafter is not, so we check the timbers from the loft before quoting.

The weather side. The most exposed elevation faces south west, so verges, ridges, chimney flashings and valleys take the driven rain. Fixings for that exposure follow BS 5534, the code of practice for slating and tiling. Each chimney, valley and abutment is its own line. The work at height rules make the platform a priced line too, and one over the A351 takes longer to set up than one in a back garden.

A competing quote should answer the stone question first. Is the stone being salvaged and re-laid, or replaced? What lead is going in at each junction? Are the scaffold licence and the skip included?

More than a hundred entries in this village are listed, and the conservation area covers nearly all of what is left. So the sensible assumption at a Corfe Castle address is that something applies until you have checked.

What it changes in practice is the specification, not just the paperwork. A listed roof has to go back in the same material, laid the same way, with the same laps and courses, and listed building consent covers the back of the building as much as the front.

That rules out the substitutions people are sometimes offered: a lighter tile in place of stone, a plastic dry verge on a stone gable, cement where lead should be. It also adds time at the front of a job, because matched stone has to be sourced, not just ordered. Tell us the address when you ring and we will establish the status before we quote.

Most repairs in Corfe Castle 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.