Roofing in Sandford

Ridge, hips and verges. The part of the roof to check first here, and the age of the streets is why. Three roofs in five went up between 1945 and 1982, most of them in the late sixties and early seventies, so the bedding mortar along the edges is all of one age and it fails as one.

It cracks, washes out and lets the tiles rock, and the wind then has something to work at. We strip the old bedding and convert to a dry fix system, dry ridge and dry verge screwed onto a ventilated roll, the mechanical fixing BS 5534 expects, which vents the roof space at the ridge as well. We would talk you out of a re-roof where only the edges are tired, and in Sandford that is most of the time.

Repairs and the substrate. Leaks are traced back to where water genuinely enters rather than patched where the stain shows. Nearly everything on the Sandford streets is concrete tile and most of it interlocking, laid when the houses were built, with plain tile, clay tile and natural slate on the older properties towards Wareham. On interlocking concrete the tile outlives what holds it down, so the fault is a nail, a clip or a junction. The felt that went on with these roofs is brittle now and tears where it laps into the gutter, the one place it has to be sound, and there is no sarking board underneath, so once the nails have gone the battens and covering move together. Where all three have gone the covering comes off, soft timber is cut out, and it goes back on breathable membrane and treated battens with a matched tile. For a single slipped tile, a cracked chimney fillet or a drip you want traced to its source, see roof repairs in Sandford.

The attached garage, the rear extension and the porch go in felt, GRP fibreglass or EPDM rubber, and the deck decides the life of all three. Flashings, soakers, valleys and abutments go in code rated lead cut so it can move without splitting. A good many chimneys on this stock were finished with a mortar fillet instead of a proper flashing, and on a house of this age that fillet is the likeliest leak on the whole roof. Original timber fascias rot quietly behind a capping board, so we look behind the capping rather than at it, and where rainwater ends up once it leaves the roof matters as much as where it comes off. With the covering off, insulation and eaves ventilation are far cheaper to put right, and Approved Document L sets the standard a renovated roof is expected to reach.

We do not price roofs by the square metre. On houses built within a few years of each other, the difference is in the detail.

Edges or the whole slope. Roofs that went on together tend to wear out together, and usually at the edges first: mortar verges cracking out, a ridge line loosening, felt rotted where it dips into the gutter. If the tiles and battens are sound, re-bedding or dry-fixing the ridge and verges to BS 5534 may be the honest job. Once the underlay has failed across the slope, a strip and re-cover is.

Bungalow or two storeys. A hipped bungalow carries a lot of hip and ridge for its size but works off a low platform. A semi or terrace needs a scaffold, and work at height rules are why it has its own line.

Chimneys and abutments. Each stack, valley and wall abutment takes hours of lead flashing, and a cracked mortar fillet is often the real leak rather than the tiles.

The ground under the downpipes. Sandford sits on sand that drains freely, but a downpipe that has been dumping roof water beside the wall for years still keeps the base of that wall wet, so we price putting that right.

A second opinion is worth having, and worth questioning. Is the scaffold in their figure? Is the old felt coming off, or staying under new tiles? Who carts the old covering away?

Most repairs in Sandford 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.