Roofing in Holt

Plenty of roofs out in Holt are not on the house. Garages, stables, workshops, stores and single storey extensions, usually flat or shallow pitched, in felt, GRP fibreglass or EPDM rubber.

All three last when the deck is sound and the falls, upstands and outlet are right, and on a building nobody goes into it is the outlet that has quietly failed, so we look at the deck before quoting anything. On the house it is slipped, cracked and missing tiles, a ridge tile that rocks under your hand, a verge that has lost its bedding, and leaks traced back to where water genuinely enters and not just patched where the stain shows. Coverings vary plot to plot: plain clay tile and natural slate on the older cottages, interlocking concrete tile on the later houses. Under all of it sit the battens, the underlay and the rafter feet, and with no sarking board on most roofs in Holt, a corroded nail or clip is usually what let go. Whatever is over you, the fault is nearly always a fixing or a junction rather than the covering, so most repairs take hours, not days. Where it is one fault on its own, such as a cracked tile over the porch or a drip by the stack that needs tracing, our page on roof repairs in Holt deals with it.

Open ground with fields and heath on the windward side means the wind gets a proper run at a roof, and it works at the edges first. We convert cracked mortar bedding to a dry fixed ridge screwed onto a ventilated roll, which is the mechanical fixing BS 5534 asks for, with dry verge units at the gable, measured by the metre of edge. Chimney flashings, soakers, back gutters, valleys and the abutments where a roof meets a wall go back in code rated lead cut so it can move. Long gutter runs on low buildings, with heath, pine and oak dropping into them all year, so clearing that debris out is regular work here, and a fair share of apparent roof leaks turn out to be a gutter running over or a downpipe discharging into thin air. With the covering off, insulation and eaves ventilation are far cheaper to sort, and Approved Document L sets the standard a renovated roof is expected to reach.

We do not price roofs by the square metre. Out in the lanes the biggest differences are getting there and getting up.

The platform. Where the scaffold stands, whether a lorry can reach and turn, and whether soft ground needs boarding out are all settled at the first visit. The work at height rules are why the platform is a line of its own, not an extra that appears later.

How many roofs. A house with a garage, a store and a stable block has four roofs. Doing the ones that need it under one scaffold and one skip costs less than doing them a winter apart.

The covering. Clay plain tiles, concrete interlocking tiles and natural slate weigh different amounts, fix differently and cost differently to replace. Changing from one to another can mean checking the rafters first.

Under the tiles. Old roofs may have no underlay at all, or bitumen felt that has perished, over battens gone soft. New battens and a breathable membrane are part of a proper re-cover.

Listed or not. On a listed building, the tiles have to match, and reclaimed clay may be needed, with lime pointing at the verges, never cement.

Trees. Branches over a roof keep valleys and gutters full of debris and moss, and they may need cutting back before a scaffold goes up.

Ask anyone quoting whether access is in the price, whether new battens and membrane are part of it, and who takes the waste away.

The ground under Holt is clay, slow draining and prone to shrinking and swelling with the seasons. That is not a roofing problem until you notice that everything the roof collects gets delivered to one or two spots at the bottom of a downpipe.

It matters in two directions. A soakaway dug into this ground will usually fail its percolation test, so roof water wants a positive outfall to a drain or a ditch rather than a pit that fills and stays full. And a downpipe discharging into a cracked gully or straight onto a border is putting a roof's worth of rainwater beside a foundation in ground that moves.

When we quote a roof we look at where the water leaves it as well: Approved Document H sets out where it is supposed to end up, and sorting a gully or a shoe while the scaffold is up is a small job rather than a separate one.

Most repairs in Holt 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.