Roofing in Wool

Gable verges and ridges on a run of houses. The weak point here, because half of Wool is terraced or semi-detached. A terrace or a pair carries one long ridge and two gable verges for several households, and both were bedded in mortar when the row was built.

Mortar cracks, the verge undercloak loses its haunching and the wind starts working under the edge tile. We strip the 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 also puts ventilation into the roof space along the ridge. On a run of houses this is worth doing on your length whether or not the neighbours join in.

Party walls and shared slopes. Where two roofs are really one roof, the detail at the party wall matters. Old rows often have a mortar upstand or a cracked haunching over the wall, and that is a common source of a leak that appears to be on your side and starts on theirs. Work at that junction can bring the Party Wall etc. Act 1996 into it, and we will tell you when a notice is needed rather than finding out halfway up a ladder.

Most of Wool is concrete tile, nearly all interlocking, on a bitumen underlay with battens and no sarking board. Older houses near the church carry plain clay tile and natural slate, and a few of the oldest have Purbeck stone slate, a slower and more careful job than anything on the estates. Thatch we leave to a thatcher, though we take on the tiled slope and leadwork beside it. Slipped, cracked and missing tile work, storm damage, and a leak traced back to where water genuinely enters rather than patched where the stain shows. If all you have is one of those faults on its own, a slipped tile, a loose ridge or a drip by the chimney, our page on roof repairs in Wool goes through the repair itself. When nails, batten ends and underlay have all gone together, the covering comes off, soft rafter feet and wet timber are cut out, and it goes back on breathable membrane and treated battens with a matched tile. On a mid terrace we set out the scaffold and the tile match before we start, because you cannot leave a half-finished slope in the middle of a row.

Garages, rear extensions, porches and the flat-roofed stores these houses came with go in felt, GRP fibreglass or EPDM rubber, and the deck is what we look at first. Chimney flashings, soakers, valleys and abutments in code rated lead, cut so it can move without splitting, because a mortar fillet at a chimney or where an extension meets the original slope is a leak on a timer. On a continuous run the gutter is shared, so a blockage over one house floods the fascia of the next, and clearing moss and debris off the slope and out of the run is ordinary maintenance. With the roof open and the access already paid for, insulation and eaves ventilation cost a fraction to put right, and Approved Document L sets the standard a renovated roof is expected to reach.

The honest answer depends on the age of the roof, its shape and how close the neighbours are, which is why we will not quote a rate per square metre.

A generation of roofs at once. More than half the homes in Wool went up between the end of the war and the early eighties, most of them in the seventies. Those roofs are now reaching the same point together: mortar bedded ridges and verges coming loose, concrete tiles worn at the nibs, and felt that has turned brittle at the eaves. Often the right job is the edges, not a full re-cover.

Terrace, semi or bungalow. A quarter of homes in Wool are terraced and another quarter semis. On those, the scaffold often has to cross a shared path or stand partly next door. Bungalows are easier to reach but spread wide. The work at height rules are why the platform is priced as a line in its own right.

The weather side. The most exposed walls in Wool face south west, and that is the slope where verges and ridges fail first. Dry fixed ridge and verge systems cost more than mortar at the outset but stand up better to driven rain.

What is under the tiles. Bitumen felt that has perished means new membrane and battens, not just new tiles.

When you compare quotes, ask: is the scaffold in, are the battens and membrane new or kept, and is the ridge bedded or dry fixed?

The biggest single group of houses in Wool went up in the 1970s and early 1980s, and much of the rest came in the thirty years before that. Whole streets were roofed within a few months of each other, same tile, same nails, same mortar bedding. They do not wear out one by one. They arrive at the same problem in the same year.

That is genuinely useful to you. When a neighbour's ridge starts shedding, yours is on the same clock, and dealing with the edges before a tile comes off in a gale is much cheaper than dealing with the consequences. It also means a quote for a full re-cover deserves a second opinion: on a roof of that age the tiles themselves are usually fine and it is the mortar and the fixings that have finished. Ask what has actually failed, and ask to see the photograph of it.

Wool is 17.1 miles from our base at 80a Wolverton Road, Boscombe. We cover the village, East Burton and the BH20 addresses out towards Wareham and Winfrith, and Dorset Council is responsible for planning and building control alike.

The firm is Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 15471719. Thomas Hannen owns it, and he comes out and prices it himself. One verified Checkatrade customer marked us 10 out of 10. Coming out to look is free, and the itemised written quote costs nothing either. Before you book a visit in Wool, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.

Most repairs in Wool 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.