Roofing in Attleborough

Attleborough sits on the A11 and has expanded quickly, so a lot of its housing stock is recent. New does not mean faultless: we are called out regularly to poorly formed verges, dry ridge fitted badly and flat roofs on extensions that were never given a fall.

Across NR17 we work on the older town centre property as well, where the coverings are pantile and slate and the problems are the traditional ones.

How the town grew

A great part of Attleborough was destroyed by fire in 1559, so little in the centre is older than that. The railway between Norwich and Brandon came through in 1845. The bigger change came after the war: the Cyprus Estate, then Fairfields and Ollands in the 1970s, then a large estate on the south side of the town in the 1990s. The bypass opened in 1984 and the A11 was widened past the town in 2007, and a strategic urban extension of up to 4,000 homes has been planned since, with a link road between London Road and Old Buckenham Road.

Each of those generations has its own roof problems. The 1970s houses are at the age where the felt under the tiles has perished. The 1990s houses are more likely to have mortar bedded verges and ridges that have started to crack and let go. The newest houses are where we find workmanship faults rather than age.

Extension flat roofs

A flat roof is never truly flat. It needs a fall to the outlet, and a lot of the extensions and garages around the town were built with too little, or with the deck sagging back the wrong way. Water that sits on the roof finds every weak joint in the covering. A new covering laid over the same dip will pond again, so the fall has to be corrected first. Our post on why water pools on a flat roof explains what to look for.

The other weak point is where the extension meets the house. That junction should be a lead flashing tucked into a mortar joint in the wall above and dressed down over the upstand of the flat roof. On a lot of extensions it is a strip of bitumen or a bead of sealant instead, and once that splits the water runs down the inside of the wall rather than across the roof.

Where to go next in Attleborough

For a replacement or re-cover, see new roofs in Attleborough. For leaks, slipped tiles and loose ridges, see roof repairs in Attleborough. Extension and garage roofs are on our general flat roofing page, and cracked mortar at the ridge or gable is covered under ridge, valley and gable repointing.