Roofing in Hyde

Bats, before anything comes off. This matters here more than almost anywhere else we work. Roof spaces and the gap under the tiles are common roosts, and both bats and their roosts are protected whether or not the bats are there when you look. Stripping a roof out of season, or foaming and sealing the underside, is how people get themselves into trouble. If we see droppings or staining at the eaves during the survey we stop and tell you, and the work is planned around it rather than through it. Nesting birds the same. Otherwise it is slipped, cracked and missing tiles, a ridge tile that rocks, storm damage and the slow leaks that show up two metres from where they start. Coverings vary lane to lane, plain clay tile and natural slate on the older cottages, interlocking concrete tile on the later houses, and the fault is nearly always a fixing or a junction rather than the covering.

Under any covering sit the battens, the underlay and the ends of the rafters. Old bitumen felt tears where it laps into the gutter and a wet fascia follows, and where a slope faces the trees and never dries the batten ends and rafter feet go soft first, so we look from inside before saying anything about the outside. When 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 matched plain tile or slate. On the newer roofs a dry fix system, dry ridge and dry verge screwed over a ventilated roll, is the mechanical fixing BS 5534 expects, and it goes on where the mortar bedding has cracked, while on an older cottage inside the conservation area we check whether a visible dry verge is acceptable first. Forest cottages carry a lot of junction for their size, and that is where the leaks live: flashings, soakers, back gutters, valleys and the abutment where a catslide or a dormer cheek meets a wall, all in code rated lead.

Gutters, the heaviest maintenance here. Oak, beech and holly leaf mats in a valley and behind a hopper, then rots into a plug a hose will not shift, so clearing the run and flushing the downpipes through is the difference between doing it once and doing it every autumn. Algae greens the slopes that never see the sun, and that ends up in the gutter as well. We check where each downpipe discharges too, because surface water sits about on this ground and the nearest watercourse, Huckles Brook, is over half a kilometre off. Insulation and eaves ventilation are far cheaper to sort while the roof is open, and Approved Document L sets the standard a renovated roof must reach.

Getting to the house comes before anything else. A lot of addresses here are down unmade tracks or gravel drives with the forest tight to the boundary, so the first thing we settle is what a scaffold lorry can actually reach and where material can be stacked. On the lower cottages a tower does more of the work than a full scaffold would. How long a platform stands matters as much as its size, and the work at height rules are why it goes on the quote as its own line rather than an optional extra. Ask whether the scaffold is in it, whether battens and membrane are renewed, and who takes the old tiles away.

People get caught out by this in both directions. Because Hyde does not look like a conservation area, with houses scattered along lanes rather than lined up on a street, owners assume none of it applies and go ahead. The Western Escarpment conservation area is drawn around the landscape, so an isolated cottage with nothing either side of it is very often inside it. In the other direction, people assume the National Park means nothing can be done, and then live with a roof that leaks.

Both are wrong, and the fix takes ten minutes. Put the address into the National Park Authority's interactive property map and you will see what the property is actually covered by before anyone quotes. What it changes is narrow: not the repair, but the tile, the slate, the colour and anything standing proud of the roof plane. Tell us early and we price the right material first time.