Roofing in Swanage

Stone slate repair and relaying means slipped and broken slates replaced with matched stone, whole slopes stripped and relaid where the fixings have gone. It lasts if the pitch is never altered, the head lap stays at no more than a third of the slate length with the side lap at 75mm or more, and the diminishing courses are kept.

We sort as we strip, so sound stone goes back on the elevation facing the street. Torching made good. Nothing pointed. A single slipped stone, a loose ridge or a leak you want traced is a smaller job, and it sits on our page for roof repairs in Swanage. Better than a quarter of the town predates 1919, and on fabric of that age materials have to be matched and the mortar has to be softer than what it beds, so lime, never cement.

Fixings on the seaward elevations. Not everything is stone. The later streets carry plain clay tile and natural slate, and the post-war stock concrete interlocking tile where the covering is sound and the ridge bedding, verge and underlay are not. Those get screwed down under BS 5534 rather than re-bedded in mortar. The bay faces east, so the elevation taking the salt off the bay is the one looking at the water, not the one facing the prevailing south westerly. Salt corrodes nails, clips and steel from the edge inwards and keeps a surface damp between showers, so a covering can look sound while what holds it down has gone. Stainless or silicon bronze on those slopes, and since wind works at the edges and the openings rather than the middle of a surface, that is where we specify hardest.

Under any covering sit the battens, the underlay and the rafter feet. Perished felt, soft batten ends and a wet rafter foot at the eaves are what we look for from inside first. Rear additions, dormer tops and bay roofs go in felt, GRP fibreglass or EPDM rubber, with the deck checked before the falls, upstands and outlet. Chimney flashings, soakers, valleys and abutments are renewed in code rated lead. Cast iron rainwater goods are common here and often worth repairing, not replacing, and with land in Swanage in flood zone 3 and a high surface water band, a downpipe discharging onto the ground and not into a drain is worth putting right at the same time.

Moss holds water against a covering and what comes off blocks gutters and valleys, so clearing it is ordinary maintenance. But mossing is a traditional bedding method on stone slate, so moss on a Purbeck roof is not automatically a fault, and we never pressure wash stone. Nearly two in five dwellings in Swanage are flats or maisonettes, where the roof belongs to the freeholder and comes out of the service charge, so before anything is priced we need to know who can instruct the work. With the covering off, insulation, eaves ventilation and any condensation problem are far cheaper to sort.

Nobody can price a roof in this town by the square metre, because on a stone roof the area is rarely what decides it.

How much stone can go back. Purbeck stone slate that lifts cleanly can be sorted, dressed and relaid, which saves a great deal of new material. Stone that has delaminated has to be replaced with matched stone from the local quarries, and it is sorted into diminishing courses by hand. We lift a few pieces before quoting, so the share being reused is a judgement, not a guess.

Salt, wind and fixings. The town faces the bay and the worst weather arrives from the south west. Old iron nails rust through first on the seaward slope, so a roof that has slipped there often has sound stone hanging on dead fixings. Fixings, underlay and lead are specified for that exposure under the slating and tiling code of practice, and on a tiled roof the ridge and verge are mechanically fixed.

Getting a platform up. A terrace on one of the hill streets, a villa split into flats with a pavement frontage, and a bungalow up at Herston each need a different scaffold, and on an unadopted lane the skip may have to stand somewhere else. Work at height rules are why the scaffold is its own line.

Before you accept any quote, ask how much of the old stone or tile is being reused, which fixings and underlay go on the seaward slope, and what code of lead is going on the chimneys.

The stone gets the attention, but a large share of dwellings are flats and maisonettes, much of it Victorian and Edwardian guest houses cut into flats rather than purpose built blocks. The roof over a conversion belongs to the freeholder and is managed on their behalf, so the person who rings often cannot authorise the work, and the useful first move is finding out who manages the building.

A converted house also carries a sequence of alterations above it: a flat roof over a rear addition, a dormer added later, lead patched by three different people. Reading that sequence is most of the survey.

Most repairs in Swanage 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.