Roofing in Upton

Leak tracing on a shared slope. Shared slopes make a leak hard to pin down. On a terrace or a semi the water enters over one house and appears over the next, because it runs down the underlay or along a batten before it drips.

We start in the loft with the covering still on, find the wet timber and work up the slope from it rather than lifting tiles above the stain and hoping. Where the fault sits over next door, we say so.

Ridge, hip and verge. Mortar bedded ridges on the 1960s and 1970s stock crack and let the tiles rock, and on a long terrace the whole run goes together. We convert to a dry fix system, dry ridge and dry verge screwed onto a ventilated roll, the mechanical fixing BS 5534 expects, which ventilates the roof space along the ridge as it goes on. On the later closes the dry verge is already there, but the early plastic units go brittle and snap at the clip.

Almost everything in Upton is concrete tile, interlocking on the post-war estates and flatter on the newer closes, with plain tile, clay tile and natural slate on the older properties towards Lytchett Minster, and where thatch adjoins we stop at the junction. The bitumen felt under a roof of this age perishes at the eaves, the one place it has to be sound to carry water into the gutter, and with no sarking board behind it the batten ends and rafter feet take the water as soon as it tears. That is what decides a re-cover, not the look of the tiles. If it is one slipped tile, a rocking ridge or a single drip you want traced, see roof repairs in Upton instead. When the nails have rusted and the felt tears at a touch, the covering comes off, wet timber is cut out and it goes back on breathable membrane and treated battens with a matched tile, finished tight at the party wall so the neighbour's half is left sound.

Flat roofs over the rear kitchen extensions, garages and porches in felt, GRP fibreglass or EPDM rubber, deck first, because here the outlet is usually the problem: one small gutter taking a whole flat roof. Terraces share a stack more often than not, and a chimney flashing repaired on one side only tends to be back within a year. Rainwater goods run house to house, so a blockage two doors along overflows onto your wall. With the covering off, insulation and eaves ventilation cost a fraction to sort, and Approved Document L sets the standard a renovated roof is expected to reach.

You will not get a rate per square metre from us. The same area of roof can be a short job or a long one, and these are the things that decide which.

Where the scaffold can go. A bungalow with a drive is the easy case: a low platform on your own ground. The terraced rows are the opposite. A mid terrace often means the scaffold comes through a shared alley or stands partly on a neighbour's side, and we settle that at the survey rather than on the morning. It is work at height either way, and the work at height rules are why the platform is a line on the quote, not an optional extra.

The age of the underlay. A roof laid around 1970 usually went on bitumen felt, and by now that felt is often brittle at the eaves and torn where it sags between rafters. Renewing battens and membrane is what turns a patch into a proper re-roof.

The fiddly parts. Hips on a bungalow, a valley where an extension meets the main roof, a chimney wanting new lead flashing, and a flat-topped dormer on a chalet all take hours a plain gable does not.

When you hold another quote next to ours, ask whether the scaffold is included, whether the battens and membrane are renewed or covered over, and how the ridge and verges are fixed: bedded in mortar, or a dry fix system to BS 8612.

The ground under Upton is cohesive and it shrinks and swells with the seasons. That makes rainwater a structural question here rather than just a damp one. A downpipe discharging beside a wall, a cracked gully or a soakaway sitting too close to a footing keeps one patch of clay wet all year while the rest dries out in summer, and that difference is what opens cracks in a wall.

So when we look at a roof here we follow the water all the way to the ground, not just to the gutter. We check that every downpipe actually enters a gully rather than splashing onto a path, that the gullies are clear, and that the discharge goes somewhere with a proper outfall. Approved Document H is the standard for that, and it is why we would rather re-run a downpipe while the platform is up than come back to it.

If you have had cracking to a wall as well as a wet fascia, mention it when you ring, because the two are often the same fault.

Upton sits 8.5 miles from our base on Wolverton Road in Boscombe, and we also cover Lytchett Minster, Hamworthy and the BH16 addresses out towards Sandford. Upton's planning and building control are with Dorset Council, while Hamworthy over the boundary is BCP Council.

The firm is Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales under company number 15471719. It is Thomas Hannen's business, and he is the one who looks at your roof and prices it. One verified customer has scored us 10 out of 10 on Checkatrade. The site visit costs nothing, and neither does the itemised written quote. Before you book a visit in Upton, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.

Most repairs in Upton 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.