Roofing in Moordown

Tile repairs. The inter-war houses on roads like Coronation Avenue and King Edward Avenue were typically roofed in clay plain tile or an early concrete tile, hung on nails that by now have often rusted through.

A slipped or cracked tile is lifted, the batten checked, and a matched tile clipped or nailed back in. Where plain tiles have gone soft and started to flake, we match them from reclaimed stock so the patch does not stand out from the street. A handful of tiles is usually a morning off a ladder or a tower.

Hips and ridges. Hipped roofs are everywhere in Moordown, and every hip is a line of tiles bedded in mortar that has had a hundred winters. When the bedding cracks, the hip tiles rock, then slide. We rebed them in a proper mortar or replace the bedding with a mechanical dry fix system, fixed in line with BS 5534 rather than held on by mortar alone. The hip iron at the bottom gets checked while we are there.

The small roofs over bays. Many of the front bays have a little roof of their own, tiled, leaded or felted, tucked under the first floor window. It gets forgotten, and it is where a lot of front room leaks start. We check the lead or felt, the flashing into the wall and the tiny gutter along its edge. If yours is flat, our flat roofing in Moordown page covers it.

Chimneys and valleys. The stacks in Moordown are mostly still up, often shared with the house next door, and the lead flashings and soakers around them are original on more roofs than you would think. Lead valleys between hips split and let water track along the rafters before it shows. We replace both in code rated lead, in lengths short enough to move with the heat.

Verges, gutters and moss. On the gable ends, the verge mortar falls out in chunks and we replace it with a dry verge system that clips on and does not need repointing. The gutter, downpipe, fascia and soffit are part of the same roof edge, so we look at the rainwater run while we are up there. Moss on the north slopes rarely leaks by itself, but it lifts plain tiles at the lap and washes down as debris that blocks the outlets, so clearing it belongs with any repair. Algae is cosmetic and can stay.

Re-covering. When the tiles are failing across a whole slope, a re-roof means stripping to the rafters, replacing soft timber, laying a breathable membrane and new treated battens, and going back on in new or sound re-used tiles. Allow a week or so on a typical detached house once the scaffold is up, more with dormers or a lot of hips.

When we would talk you out of it. If the tiles are sound and it is only the hips or one valley letting go, you do not need a new roof, whatever the survey said. A roof repair and a missing tile or two is a very different bill from a re-cover, and stripping a sound roof to put interlocking concrete tile or slate on because two hips have failed is a lot of money spent on a small problem. We will tell you that in writing. If all you have is one slipped tile, a loose hip or a leak that needs tracing, our page on roof repairs in Moordown covers that smaller work.

No rate per square metre, because the square metres are the easiest thing to measure and the least useful thing to know.

Getting to it. A hipped detached house on a quiet side road, a bungalow you can nearly reach from the drive, and a shop on Wimborne Road with a flat above it and the pavement in front are three different set ups, and the last one needs a council licence, because scaffolding on or over a highway needs a licence in writing. Some roofs come off a tower, most want a scaffold, and 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.

Junctions and substrate. Chimneys, valleys and abutments are priced one at a time, because that is where the leadwork hours go. Battens, membrane and fixings are the part nobody sees and the part that decides what a re-cover costs.

Comparing quotes? Ask whether the scaffold is in the price, whether battens and membrane are renewed or covered over, what grade of lead is going on the chimney, and who pays for the skip.

We cover Moordown and the rest of BH9, from the shops on Wimborne Road down into Winton and across to Kinson, with BCP Council as the planning and building control authority. Our Boscombe base is a little over two miles away.

You are dealing with Bournemouth Roofing & Building, the trading name of Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 15471719, which you can look up in a minute. Thomas Hannen's business, and he is the one who comes out to price the job, not a salesman. A verified customer's 10 out of 10 on Checkatrade. The visit and the written quote are both free. Before you book a visit in Moordown, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.

Most repairs in Moordown 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.