Roofing in Ferndown

Tired and finished are not the same roof. Signs a covering is finished rather than damaged: tiles that have lost their colour and gone pale grey with a rough sandy face, flaking faces with grit collecting in the gutters, slipped and missing tiles in ones and twos all over the roof rather than in one place, which means the nails are going rather than one tile failing, and daylight through the felt from inside the loft. One of those on its own is a repair. Several together is a re-cover.

Over half of Ferndown was built between 1945 and 1982, with the largest cohort in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and almost everything here is concrete interlocking tile on a shallow pitch, a great deal of it on wide single-storey plans. Plain clay tile and natural slate turn up only on the older houses, where a plain tile roof is nailed to battens rather than interlocked, and there is no stone slate here. Two in five homes are bungalows, so there is a lot of ridge, hip and verge for the size of house, and the fault is usually a fixing or a junction rather than the covering itself. Most repairs are hours rather than days. When the nails, battens and underlay have gone together the covering comes off, soft timber is replaced, and it goes back on breathable membrane and treated battens with a matched tile, ridges and hips screwed down rather than bedded in mortar, which is what BS 5534 expects. Cracked mortar bedding is the usual finding, and the answer is a dry fix system with dry ridge and dry verge units screwed over a vented roll.

Nearly a third of the dwellings here are flats or maisonettes, where the roof belongs to the freeholder and is managed out of the service charge, so the person who rings is often not the person who can instruct the work. We will still come out and put the scope in writing for the agent.

Rear extensions, garages, dormers and porches come in felt, GRP fibreglass or EPDM rubber, and we look at the deck before the falls, upstands and outlet. Chimney flashings, soakers, valleys and abutments go back in code rated lead, and most of the leaks we chase start at a junction. A fair share of the roof leaks we attend turn out to be a gutter running over or a downpipe discharging into thin air, which on ground that shrinks and swells matters beside a foundation. While the roof is open, insulation, eaves ventilation and any condensation problem are far cheaper to sort, and Approved Document L sets the standard a renovated roof is expected to reach.

No rate per square metre. Wide single-storey plans mean a lot of roof and a lot of edge for the size of house, but low eaves mean much of the work comes off a tower rather than a full scaffold. How long a platform stands matters as much as its size, and the work at height rules are why it is a priced line rather than an optional extra. Chimneys, valleys and abutments are priced one at a time. Ask whether the scaffold is in the price, whether battens and membrane are renewed or covered over, and who pays for the skip.

Over four in ten homes here are bungalows, which means the roof covers the whole footprint and is the largest surface on the building. A re-roof stops water getting in. It does nothing on its own about heat getting out, and on a house of this vintage that is usually where the money is going.

What we typically find: insulation laid between the joists and never topped up across them, so every joist is a cold line straight through the layer. Boarding screwed down onto the insulation, crushing it flat. Gaps round the hatch, the tank and the downlighters. And eaves ventilation blocked by insulation pushed too far into the corner.

Doing it during a re-roof is cheaper and cleaner than doing it later, and it lets us deal with airflow and insulation together rather than solving one and creating a condensation problem with the other. Approved Document L sets the standard where more than half a roof is renovated.

We cover Ferndown and the surrounding BH22 addresses including West Parley, Longham, Stapehill, Tricketts Cross and Dudsbury, under Dorset 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.