Roofing in Milford on Sea

Ridge, hips and verges. This is where a seaside roof gives way first. Mortar bedding on a roof less than a kilometre from the sea cracks and washes out, and once it does the tiles rock and the wind gets under them.

We strip it and fit a dry fix system, dry ridge and dry verge screwed onto a ventilated roll, the mechanical fixing BS 5534 expects, and we use stainless screws, never plated, because plated ones are a short term answer this close to salt water.

Blocks, and who we quote to. A quarter of the homes in Milford on Sea are flats, so plenty of these roofs belong to a freeholder, a management company or a residents' association rather than to whoever can see the stain. Where leaseholders are being recharged for a major roof, section 20 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985 sets out the consultation the landlord has to run first. It is worth settling who instructs the work before anybody measures anything.

Slipped and cracked tiles, a missing tile after a gale, storm damage, and a leak traced to where water genuinely enters rather than patched where the stain shows. Over half of Milford on Sea went up between the war and the early eighties, so the common covering is concrete tile, a great deal of it interlocking. Older houses towards the sea carry plain tile, clay tile and natural slate, and there is no stone slate on this coast. On interlocking concrete the tile outlives its fixings, so the fault is a nail or a clip. If all you have is one slipped tile or a single drip, roof repairs in Milford on Sea deals with that on its own.

Garages, dormers, porches, rear extensions and the flat sections on the blocks around Milford on Sea, in felt, GRP fibreglass or EPDM rubber. All of them last or fail on a sound deck, honest falls, upstands taken high enough, and an outlet that is not sat in a puddle. We look at the deck before quoting a covering. Chimney flashings, soakers, valleys and abutments in code rated lead, cut so it can move without splitting. Lead is the one metal on the roof that does not mind the salt, which is exactly why it is used at the junctions.

When nails, battens and underlay have gone together, the covering comes off, soft rafter feet are cut out, and the new roof goes back on breathable membrane and treated battens with a matched tile, clipped at the perimeter courses rather than only at the eaves. There is no sarking board under these roofs, so the membrane does more work than people think. Salt air is hard on rainwater goods and harder on the brackets holding them up, and we clear the run before replacing anything, because a fair share of roof leaks turn out to be an overflow. Sea air also keeps a slope damp between showers, so growth comes back faster here than inland, and clearing the moss is gentler than a pressure washer that takes the surface off a tile. With the covering off and the access already paid for, insulation, eaves ventilation and condensation are cheapest to sort, and Approved Document L sets the standard a renovated roof is expected to reach.

Two roofs of the same size in Milford on Sea can be priced a long way apart, and here is why. Which way it faces. Salt attacks metal fixings from the edges inwards, and the south westerly wind pulls at verges, hips and ridges and leaves the middle of a slope alone.

BS 5534 sets fixing levels for that exposure, so a re-roof here often takes more clips and nails than the original, in stainless, plus a dry fix ridge and verge system in place of mortar that the weather picks out.

When it was built. Much of Milford on Sea went up in the seventies and early eighties: concrete interlocking tiles on trussed rafters, with a bitumen felt that is now tearing at the eaves. That roof is often sound in structure and simply needs new underlay, battens and tiles. An older house in the village centre can hide more.

How much platform. A bungalow needs a short run of scaffold. A block of flats needs a great deal more, and the bill is usually shared out through the service charge. Near the front it has to be tied and braced, and under the work at height rules it is a line of its own, costed by how long it stands.

The details. Every chimney, valley and abutment has its own lead and its own labour, so each is priced separately.

Before choosing, ask each roofer: stainless fixings or not? Scaffold included, and for how long? Who is paying for the skip?

Most repairs in Milford on Sea 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.