Roofing in Longham

Every hip is a run of mortar sat in the weather. On this stock the edges are the weak point. More than a third of the dwellings are bungalows, which means the same floor area with roughly twice the roof and far more ridge, hip and verge per house, and every one of those runs is mortar bedding that has sat in the weather since the house went up.

Once it cracks the tiles start to move and you find the mortar on the path. We take the old bedding off and refit ridge, hips and verges dry, screwed down over a ventilated roll. That is the mechanical fixing BS 5534 asks for, it opens a ventilation path along the ridge, and there is nothing left to re-bed later. Six in ten dwellings went up between 1945 and 1982, most in the late sixties and early seventies, so nearly everything in Longham is concrete tile, most of it interlocking.

Interlocking concrete outlasts the nails and clips holding it down, so what has failed is a fixing or a junction, not the tile. Rusted nails, batten ends gone soft and underlay that comes apart in your hand are what finishes a roof, and together they make patching money thrown away: the covering comes off, rotten rafter feet are cut out, and the slope is relaid over breathable membrane on treated battens in a tile matched to the street. On these roofs you are more often not there yet, and we say so. Chimney flashings, soakers, valleys and abutments go in code rated lead, and on this stock the usual leak is the valley between two hips or where an extension meets the original roof.

Where the water goes. On a wide, low roof like these, plenty of apparent roof leaks are really guttering: a run overflowing at the back, or a downpipe emptying onto nothing. Where that water finishes up matters here, because the ground is cohesive and changes volume with how wet it is, so a downpipe discharging beside a wall is a structural question and not simply a damp one. Approved Document H is the standard for taking it away properly. The attached garage, rear extension and porch are felt, GRP fibreglass or EPDM rubber, and on a single storey house the flat roof runs into the main slope rather than up a wall, which is where they give up, so the deck and that junction come first. With the slope open and the platform already paid for, insulation and eaves ventilation cost a fraction of the same work as its own visit, and Approved Document L is the standard a renovated roof must meet.

The shape of the roof matters. About a third of homes in Longham are bungalows. A bungalow puts the same floor area under a bigger roof, with more ridge, hip and verge for every room below it. That edge work is slow, careful labour, so a hipped bungalow can take longer than a plain two storey gable with the same footprint.

Getting up there. Single storey eaves need less scaffold, and the edge and rainwater work can often come off a tower. A two storey detached house wants a proper platform along the elevation, which is its own line because the HSE rules on roofwork demand edge protection. How long it stands matters as much as its size.

What is under the tiles. Roofs of this age often still have the original bitumen felt, sagging between the rafters and brittle at the eaves, over battens that have had decades of damp. Whether the battens and membrane are renewed, or the tiles are relaid on the old ones, is the biggest difference between two quotes.

Ridge and hips. Mortar bedded ridge and hip tiles from that era crack and wash out. Rebedding them is one price. Changing to a dry ridge and dry hip system with mechanical fixings is another, and it is the direction the code of practice for slating and tiling points in.

Before you sign anyone's quote, ask about the parts that are easy to leave out. Are the battens and membrane new, or are the tiles going back on the old ones? Is the scaffold in the figure? And who takes the old tiles away?

Six in ten homes in Longham were built between 1945 and 1982, and the peak was the late 1960s and early 1970s. That is one cohort of roofs, laid to the same detail, within a few years of each other, and it is the single most useful thing to know before you spend anything.

That has consequences in Longham. The roofs reach the end of their bedding mortar together, which is why scaffolds appear along one road in the same couple of summers and why your neighbour's roof is a fair preview of yours. And what has gone is almost always the mortar at the edges, not the tile.

So when someone quotes you a full re-cover on a roof that is dropping mortar, ask them what they found in the loft. If the battens are sound and the underlay is not tearing, dry fixing the ridge, hips and verges is the job, and it costs a fraction of a re-cover because it needs a fraction of the work. If all you have is one rocking hip tile, a single valley letting in rain or a drip under the garage roof, our page on roof repairs in Longham takes each of those faults on its own.

Longham is 4.7 miles up the road from our base in Boscombe. We cover the village along the Ringwood Road and Ham Lane, and the BH22 roads either side towards Ferndown, Hampreston and West Parley. Dorset Council handles planning and building control here.

The firm is Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 15471719. It is Thomas Hannen's business, and Thomas comes out and prices your roof himself. On Checkatrade, one verified customer has given us 10 out of 10. The site visit costs nothing, and neither does the written, itemised quote. Before you book a visit in Longham, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.

Most repairs in Longham 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.