Roofing in Wareham

Ridge and verge on the estate roofs. On the estate roofs in town, the edges go first. Half the houses in Wareham went up between the war and the early eighties, and every one of those roofs has its ridge and gable verge bedded in sand and cement.

The bedding cracks along the joint, water gets behind it, and it comes away in pieces while the tiles either side are sound. We strip it 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 along the ridge at the same time.

Slate and plain tile in the old streets. A different failure. What finishes a pre-war slate roof is the nail, not the slate: the heads corrode, slates creep down a course, and you get slips along one line instead of damage in a patch. Those roofs sit on battens with no sarking and often no underlay, so the repair means lifting the courses above rather than sliding something in from beneath. Plain clay tile goes the same way and the pegs give out first. Out towards Corfe you meet Purbeck stone slate, heavy and laid in diminishing courses, which wants the rafters looked at before anyone re-lays it. Thatch we leave alone, and look at the tiled range and the chimney beside it.

Concrete tile covers most of Wareham, nearly all of it interlocking and laid to a shallow pitch, which copes with everything until one tile lifts and the course below starts taking water sideways. Slipped, cracked and missing tile work, storm damage, a hip tile you can rock by hand, and a leak traced back to where water genuinely enters, never patched where the stain shows. If you have one slipped tile or a single leak on an otherwise sound roof, our page on roof repairs in Wareham deals with that job by itself. On the seventies roofs the tell is at the eaves, where the old bitumen underlay has torn where it laps into the gutter, the one place it has to be sound. When the fixings, battens and underlay have gone together the covering comes off, soft rafter feet are cut out, and it goes back on breathable membrane and treated battens with a matched tile and stainless nails and clips.

Chimney flashings, soakers, valleys and the abutments where an extension meets the original roof go in code rated lead cut so it can move without splitting, and on a terrace the stack usually sits on the party wall and is shared. Flat roofs over garages, back additions, dormers and the flats above the shops in felt, GRP fibreglass or EPDM rubber, deck first and then the falls, upstands and outlet. A good share of apparent roof leaks are a gutter running over or a downpipe discharging into nothing, and in the older parts a parapet gutter can run behind three houses before it finds an outlet, so clearing the moss and debris out of it is what stops the next ceiling. With the roof open, insulation and eaves ventilation cost a fraction to sort, and Approved Document L sets the standard a renovated roof is expected to reach.

A Wareham roof has no rate per square metre. The number that matters is what the roof is, where it is and what is under it.

Which kind of Wareham house. Most of the town was built in the late sixties and early seventies, and those roofs are usually concrete interlocking tile on battens and an old felt underlay that has gone brittle at the eaves. Inside the walls you find clay tile and natural slate on older timbers, with chimneys, lead valleys and mortar-bedded ridges, and on a listed house the covering has to be matched rather than swapped.

The scaffold and the street. A terrace straight onto the pavement means a licence, a gantry over the footway and nowhere to park a lorry. A bungalow on a drive is a much lighter set up. It is work at height either way, and the work at height rules are why the platform is a priced line of its own.

Weather from the south west. The exposed slopes here face the prevailing wind, and driven rain works at the verges, the ridge and round chimneys rather than the middle of the slope. Tile fixings are specified to BS 5534 for that exposure, which can mean more clips and nails than the roof had before.

When you compare quotes, ask whether the scaffold and its licence are included, whether the battens and membrane are being renewed or left under the new tiles, and how the ridge and verges will be fixed.

Wareham is 12.5 miles from our base in Boscombe. We cover the town inside the walls, Northport, Stoborough and the BH20 addresses out towards Ridge and Sandford, and Dorset Council handles planning and building control for all of them.

The business is Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 15471719, which you can look up on Companies House. It is Thomas Hannen's firm, and he comes to the house and prices the roof himself. A verified customer scored us 10 out of 10 on Checkatrade. The site visit is free, and so is the written quote with every item listed. Before you book a visit in Wareham, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.

Most repairs in Wareham 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.