Roofing in Milford on Sea

Ridge, hips and verges. The biggest single job here. 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 rather than plated screws because plated ones are a short term answer this close to salt water.

Blocks, and who we quote to. A quarter of the homes here 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 the town 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.

Garages, dormers, porches, rear extensions and the flat sections on the blocks around the town, in felt, GRP fibreglass or EPDM rubber. All of them last or fail on the same four things: 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.

No rate per square metre. Close to the front the scaffold has to be tied and braced for wind rather than just stood up, and on the blocks there is more platform to pay for than on a house. How long it stands matters as much as its size. This is work at height and the work at height rules are why the platform is a priced line rather than an optional extra. Chimneys, valleys and abutments are priced one at a time. Ask whether the scaffold is in the price and who pays for the skip.