Roofers in Southbourne

Repairs to period roofs. A lot of Southbourne was built in the years before and after the First World War, and those houses mostly carry clay plain tile or natural slate on steep hipped roofs, often with a tile hung gable or a small roof over a bay.

The tiles themselves usually outlast what holds them. Nails rust through, a peg rots, and a slipped or cracked tile works loose a course at a time. A roof repair on one of these Southbourne houses is normally a day or two: missing tile replaced with a matched clay or reclaimed slate, the ones around it refixed, and the underside checked from the loft for the stain you cannot see from the road. We would talk you out of a new roof if the battens are sound and the problem is a handful of fixings. If what you have is one leak or a few slipped tiles, our page on roof repairs in Southbourne takes those faults one at a time.

Ridges, hips and verges. On the 1920s and 1930s houses the ridge and hip tiles sit on mortar bedding, and mortar is the first thing to go once a winter of wind and salt has worked on it. We take the loose ones off and either rebed them properly or convert to a dry fix system, with a dry ridge screwed to a ventilated roll and a dry verge on the gable. Dry fixing is what BS 5534 expects of a new roof, and on an exposed slope it removes the detail that fails first.

Chimneys and leadwork. The big Edwardian houses in Southbourne have big stacks, and the flashings, soakers, back gutter and any valley around them are where most stubborn leaks start. We replace them in code rated lead, dressed so it can move without splitting, and repoint the stack while the scaffold is up. Where a stack now serves several flats, we say so on the quote so the freeholder knows what it covers.

Re-roofing. When the nails, battens and old felt underlay have all gone at once, patching stops being worth it. The covering is stripped, any soft rafter or sarking board is replaced, and it goes back on a breathable membrane and treated battens with the original clay tile or slate reused where it is sound and matched where it is not. A detached house of the sort common in Southbourne is roughly a week to ten working days once the scaffold is up, depending on the stacks and valleys. On the newer blocks and the later estates the covering is usually concrete interlocking tile, which is quicker to strip and relay.

The rest of the roof. Flat roofs over back extensions, dormers, garages and the tops of bays in felt, GRP fibreglass or EPDM rubber; gutters, downpipes, fascias and soffits; and moss and debris cleared so the rainwater reaches the outlets. With the tiles off, loft insulation and eaves ventilation cost far less to sort, and insulating without keeping the eaves clear only moves the condensation somewhere else.

One person to ring from the first visit to the last. The quote is itemised, not a figure on the back of a card: scaffold, the strip out, battens and membrane, the covering, each junction and disposal on separate lines, so you can compare it properly against anyone else's.

Nothing is left open or unusable overnight. The site is swept at the end of each day, not the end of the job, and what comes out leaves with us. If something turns up once we start that nobody could have seen, you get a photograph and a price before we carry on.

BCP Council is the planning authority. Re-covering a house in matching materials is normally permitted development, and the Planning Portal guidance shows where that ends. Flats have no permitted development rights, so a change of covering on a block needs planning. The western stretch of Southbourne Grove is a conservation area, and the edge of Wick Village conservation area reaches in near the river, where swapping clay for concrete or slate for anything else is a change of appearance rather than maintenance, so the council keeps the list and we check the address first. Re-covering a roof is building work, notified through building control or a competent person scheme, and renovating more than a quarter of it brings in the insulation standard.

Ring rather than use the form. Anything letting water in goes to the front of the queue. The first visit is about making it safe and watertight so nothing gets worse while you decide, and we quote the permanent repair once the whole of it can be seen.

If you are in a Southbourne top floor flat, tell your managing agent at the same time as us, because the roof above you is almost certainly theirs to repair. Scheduled work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm. For anything urgent, ring rather than use the form, and if we cannot pick up we ring you back as soon as we can.

Call now: 07435 839745

Southbourne Overcliff Drive runs along the top of the cliff with nothing between the houses and the sea, and the roads behind it are only a few minutes' walk from the edge. On a roof that matters for the edges and for the fixings.

Wind coming straight off Poole Bay lifts the edges of a covering, the verges, the ridge and the first courses at the eaves, far harder than it does a mile inland at Tuckton by the river. And salt in that wind corrodes ordinary galvanised nails and clips from the head down, so a roof can look complete from the road while what holds it on has gone.

So the specification changes with the address. On the cliff top and the roads running back from it we fix every tile rather than every other course, use stainless steel or silicon bronze nails and clips, and treat mortar bedding at the verge and ridge as something to replace with a dry fix rather than point up again. Further back, towards the Grove and down to Tuckton, the standard fixing pattern for the exposure is usually enough, and we will not charge you for the cliff top specification on a sheltered roof. The quote says which one you are getting and why.

Nearby places we also cover for roofing, with straight-line distances from Southbourne, and the other trades we offer in Southbourne itself.

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