Roofing in Furzehill

Ridge and verge in mortar are the default detail on every Furzehill roof of this vintage and the first thing to fail. Ridge tiles bedded in sand and cement crack along the joint, water gets behind, and the bedding lets go in pieces.

Gable verges in Furzehill almost all sit on a mortar undercloak that drops off in slabs. We strip the mortar and convert to dry ridge and dry verge screwed onto a ventilated roll, which is the mechanical fixing BS 5534 expects and vents the roof space along the ridge while it is at it. Nearly half the dwellings went up between 1945 and 1982, the largest group in the late sixties and early seventies, and that stock is concrete interlocking tile laid to a shallow pitch, which is fine until a single tile lifts. The older properties towards Holt carry plain tile, clay tile and natural slate on battens with no sarking behind them. Stone slate is a Purbeck thing and you will not find it this side of Wimborne.

Never put a saw through a trussed rafter. Roofs of this era are almost all trussed rafter, a factory made web of thin timbers that only works as a whole. Cutting one for a loft ladder, a tank platform or extra headroom takes the strength out of it. If you want a boarded loft or a room up there, that is an engineer's drawing and new structure, not a saw, and we will say so rather than quietly do it. The other hidden fault on a seventies roof is the underlay at the eaves: the original bitumen has gone brittle and tears exactly where it laps into the gutter, the one place it has to be sound, which is what soaks a fascia with no tile out of place anywhere.

When nails, battens and membrane have gone together the covering comes off, soft timber and rafter feet are replaced, and it goes back on breathable membrane and treated battens with ridges and hips screwed rather than bedded. If the roof is sound apart from one lifted tile, a rocking hip or a drip you want traced, that belongs on our page for roof repairs in Furzehill. The integral garage, porch canopy and rear extension are felt, GRP fibreglass or EPDM rubber, deck checked before the falls, upstands and outlet. Cement fillets instead of lead are common here and they all crack, so they come out and code rated lead goes in. The ground here is cohesive and holds water, so where a downpipe discharges is a structural question as well as a damp one. With the covering off, insulation and eaves ventilation are far cheaper to put right, and Approved Document L sets the standard a renovated roof is expected to reach.

A Furzehill roof has no rate per square metre, because two roofs of the same size can be very different jobs. The age of the roof. The post-war houses and bungalows usually carry concrete interlocking tiles, and many still have the original bitumen felt under them.

By now that underlay is often brittle at the eaves, so the real question is whether the battens and membrane are renewed or the tiles simply relaid. The older cottages and farmhouses are a different job, often clay tiles or slate, and on a listed one the covering is not your choice alone.

The shape of it. A bungalow roof is large for the floor area but low, and the eaves can often be reached from a tower. A detached house with a hipped roof, a chimney and a valley over a bay has more junctions. Each chimney, valley and abutment gets its own line on the quote, since the leadwork and flashing hours sit there.

Scaffold on soft ground. Plots are generous, with room for a scaffold and a delivery lorry, but the cohesive ground holds water. Sole boards under the standards and boards under the skip are a real cost after a wet spell. The scaffold is hired by the week, so a roof that takes longer costs more to stand, and the work at height rules decide what it must include.

Any other roofer's price is only comparable once you know the answers. Is scaffold included? Will new battens and membrane go on, or will the tiles just be relaid? Who takes the old tiles away?

The ground around Furzehill is cohesive and it shrinks and swells with the seasons. That turns a bit of roof drainage from a damp nuisance into something structural, because water repeatedly soaking into clay beside a foundation, or repeatedly being taken away from it, is what moves a wall.

So on this ground we do not treat the gutter as an afterthought at the end of a roof job. A downpipe has to discharge into something that carries water away from the building, not onto a flowerbed against the wall and not into a gully that has silted up.

A soakaway needs to be a sensible distance from the house and it has to pass a percolation test, which on this ground plenty of them do not, so a positive connection to a drain is often the honest answer. Approved Document H covers where the water is allowed to go.

The practical version: have the rainwater goods and the gullies looked at in the same visit as the roof, while the scaffold is already up.

Most repairs in Furzehill 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.