Roofing in Crossways
Bungalow and estate roofs across the village: repairs, dry ridge and verge, full re-covers, flat roofs and leadwork. Free site visit, itemised written quote.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
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Your covering at Crossways is very likely your own choice. There is no conservation area over the village, so unless your own house is listed, a like for like re-cover needs no application at all. Very little of this patch can say that.
Crossways is a planned village, not an old one: heathland between Dorchester and Wool that filled up from the 1960s onwards, with a big share of bungalows and a lot of trussed rafter roofs of the same handful of ages. That makes the work predictable.
Roofs here fail at the ridge, the verge and the eaves long before anything happens in the middle of a slope, and the trees on three sides of the village decide how often the gutters need looking at. We come out, get on the roof, put a torch through the loft hatch and photograph what we find. If water is already dripping through a bungalow ceiling in Crossways, ring 07435 839745 and do not wait on the form. The site visit and the written quote are both free. Crossways is 21.8 miles from our base in Boscombe.
The work
A big roof on a small footprint, mostly hipped
Bungalow roofs. The village has plenty of bungalows, and a bungalow puts a large roof over a small footprint, so the roof is a bigger share of the building than anywhere else. The upside is height, though a full slope still needs scaffold with edge protection.
The catch is that most are hipped, so there is far more hip and ridge per square metre than on a two storey house, and that is where a covering fails first. Everything of this age was bedded and pointed in mortar, and mortar shrinks, cracks, takes in water and lets go. The first sign is usually a ridge tile that rocks or a lump of bedding on the path. We take the old bedding off and fit a dry ridge and dry verge screwed onto a ventilated roll, the mechanical fixing BS 5534 asks for, priced by the metre of edge, not by the roof.
Mostly concrete interlocking tile out in Crossways, with clay plain tile and natural slate on the handful of older cottages in the lanes. On a roof this age the covering usually outlives the nails and clips holding it, so we replace with a matched tile and re-fix either side of it. The bitumen felt under these roofs perishes and tears where it laps into the gutter, which is the one place it has to be sound. That tear soaks the fascia and the rafter feet, and it is the usual reason for a stained ceiling here. Where the trouble is a single fault, such as one rocking hip tile or a leak you want traced, see our page on roof repairs in Crossways.
When nails, battens and felt have gone together, the covering comes off, soft timber is cut out, and a new roof goes back on breathable membrane and treated battens. One local point on a bungalow: if you want a different covering, the weight has to suit the trusses, and that is worth checking before you fall for a tile.
Rear extensions, garages, porches and the flat topped dormers on converted bungalow lofts come in felt, GRP fibreglass or EPDM rubber, deck first, then the falls, upstands and outlet. Heath, pine and birch on three sides means more in the gutters than a town street gets, and needles wash through and pack the downpipe out of sight, so the run has to be emptied and the downpipes flushed. While the covering is off, insulation and eaves ventilation cost far less to sort, and Approved Document L sets the standard a renovated roof has to reach.
How it runs
Re-roofing a house in Crossways, step by step
Thomas Hannen drives the 21.8 miles from Boscombe and looks at the roof himself. He checks the ridge, the verges and the valleys from the ground and a ladder, and puts his head through the loft hatch to see the underlay and the trusses.
He prices it there and then, and the written quote gives each item its own line: scaffold, stripping the old tiles, new battens and breathable membrane, the covering, any chimney or abutment with its lead flashing, the ridge and verges, and the skip. You deal with one company from the quote to the finish.
About a third of Crossways went up between 1945 and 1982 and nearly as much from 1983 to 2008, much of it on open plots off wide estate roads, so a scaffold and a skip usually fit on the drive without a footway licence. The roof is sheeted at night, the drive and garden are cleared each evening, and the old tiles leave with us. Should the stripped roof reveal rotten battens, a failed valley or a damaged truss, Thomas photographs it, tells you the cost, and waits for your go ahead.
On permission Crossways is simple. There is no conservation area, and if your house is not on the Historic England list, a repair or a like for like re-cover needs no planning permission and runs as ordinary permitted development, inside the limits Planning Portal guidance sets out. Renew more than half of the roof and building control applies, because the insulation has to come up to standard. Dorset Council handles both. If you own a flat, the freeholder or managing agent has to instruct the work.
Cost
Concrete tiles, trusses and verges: what the price turns on
A Crossways roof has no rate per square metre, even on an estate where the roofs look alike. Access. Crossways is kind here. Plots are open and roads are wide, so there is room for a scaffold, a lorry and a skip. A bungalow needs a lower scaffold, but still edge protection. Two storey houses need a full scaffold, and how long it stands matters as much as its size. The work at height rules are why the platform has its own price.
What the roof is made of. Most roofs from this era are concrete interlocking tiles on battens over bitumen felt, laid on trussed rafters. The felt is often brittle by now, and where it has sagged into the gutter it no longer sheds water. A re-cover means new battens and a breathable membrane, not just new tiles.
Ridges and verges. Mortar bedded ridges and verges crack and fall out long before the tiles fail. Replacing them with a mechanically fixed dry ridge and dry verge is a common job on its own and is priced by the metre of run.
The junctions. Chimneys, valleys and abutments against a garage or extension wall are priced one at a time, because the leadwork hours are there.
If you hold a rival quote, check that it says whether battens and membrane are replaced, whether the ridge and verges are bedded in mortar or dry fixed, and whether scaffold hire is included.
If it is leaking now
A leak in the ceiling after a windy night
Put a bucket under the drip and move anything electrical. Before we arrive, look along the ridge and the gable verges from the ground, not the middle of the slope, and check the path and lawn for lumps of mortar bedding or a broken tile.
On roofs with mortar bedded ridges and verges, the wind usually gets in at those edges first. The first visit makes the roof safe and dry: loose ridge or verge pieces secured or taken down, slipped tiles refixed, and a sheet over anything that cannot be fixed that day. Then we price the proper repair. Our booked work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm. A leak is a phone call, not a form. If no one answers, leave a message and we return it as soon as we can.
Worth knowing
Nothing here is protected, and that is worth money
Most of the places we work in carry something: a conservation area, a listed cottage next door, a landscape designation that means somebody at the council has a view on your tiles. Crossways carries none of it, and that has two practical effects.
You are not obliged to match what is up there, so a discontinued concrete tile does not send you hunting a reclaim yard, and you can move to a different covering as long as the trusses take the weight. And you are not waiting on anybody: no consent, no application, no fee, no argument about a rooflight.
The one thing that changes the answer is turning the loft into a separate flat or holiday let. New overnight accommodation lands in the Poole Harbour nutrient catchment and has to be dealt with properly. Re-roofing does not, and nor does a new flat roof over the same extension. So if somebody tells you the roof job needs planning, ask which part of it they mean.
Who you are dealing with
The roofer who drives out to DT2
Our base is in Boscombe, 21.8 miles from Crossways. Roofs in the village and in nearby Warmwell, Woodsford and Moreton are all within our reach, and planning and building control here sit with Dorset Council. The company is Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 15471719. Before you book a visit in Crossways, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.
It belongs to Thomas Hannen, who climbs the ladder to your roof and prices the work himself. Checkatrade holds a 10 out of 10 for us from a verified customer. You will not pay for the visit, and the quote, listing every item in writing, is free.
Planning at a glance
Do you need planning permission in Crossways?
Most repairs in Crossways 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.
| Question | In Crossways |
|---|---|
| Who decides | Dorset Council is the planning authority for Crossways. Dorset Council's heritage pages set out what it controls. |
| Conservation area | None covers Crossways, so a like-for-like repair is ordinary maintenance. |
| Listed buildings | Nothing in Crossways is on the statutory list, so listed building consent does not come into it. |
| Protected landscape | No National Park or National Landscape covers Crossways. |
Questions
Questions about roofing in Crossways
Nothing in Crossways is listed or in a conservation area. Does that make re-roofing simpler?
On the appearance side it does. Crossways has no conservation area and nothing on the statutory list, which is genuinely unusual on this patch. A re-cover is ordinary permitted development and the tile you put back is your own choice, with no negotiation with Dorset Council. Building regulations still apply to how the work is carried out, and altering the roof shape instead of re-covering it is a different question.
Can I go from concrete tiles to something lighter?
You can, and here there is nothing on the planning side standing in the way. The limit is structural. Rafters sized for heavy concrete will carry a lighter covering without complaint, but doing it the other way round is where people come unstuck. We measure the rafters and check the spans from inside the loft, and if the roof will not take what you have picked we say so before anything is ordered.
My gutters overflow at the same corner every winter. Why?
Usually because the fall has been lost or a joint has dropped, and on the ground at Crossways that is worth putting right rather than living with. The soil is cohesive and moves significantly as it wets and dries, so soaking one patch beside the wall each winter and drying it out each summer works the ground under the foundation. We reset the run, renew the joints and get the discharge into a gully.
Crossways is twenty-two miles out. Do you actually cover it?
We do, and it gets asked often enough to answer plainly. Crossways is about twenty-two miles west of the yard, which is a straight run with no lane crawl. The distance changes the scheduling. It does not change our willingness. We would rather bring the scaffold, the materials and the crew in one movement than make three separate trips, so a start date is set once everything is ready to go at once.
Would a tower do instead of a full scaffold?
A tower will do for a single tile at a low bungalow eaves and very little else. It gives you one working position and nowhere safe to stack material, so the day goes on moving it rather than roofing. Crossways has a lot of bungalows, and even at that height a full slope wants a proper scaffold run with edge protection along the eaves.
Nearby, and next door
Roofing near Crossways
Nearby places we also cover for roofing, with straight-line distances from Crossways, and the other trades we offer in Crossways itself.
Roofing nearby
Our other trades in Crossways
Roofing guides
Concrete vs clay roof tiles: which is right? Planning, building regs or listed building consent Storm damage to a roof: the first 24 hoursEverything we do in Wareham Roofing, all areas Every area we cover
Free quote
A written price for your Crossways roof
Send the postcode and what you have noticed. We come out, look at the whole roof and put it in writing.