Roof repairs in Attleborough

New does not mean faultless. A large share of the repair work we do in Attleborough is on housing that is nowhere near old enough to be failing, and in almost every case the covering is fine and something at the edge of it was not finished properly the first time round.

What goes wrong on a newer roof

Verges

Either bedded in mortar that has already cracked, or a dry verge unit that was clipped on without being fixed down properly. Both let wind under the edge tile, and once the wind has one it works along the row.

Ridge

Loose ridge tiles on a house that is barely twenty years old are not wear. They are a fixing that was never right. We refit mechanically rather than bedding them back in mortar to do it again.

Abutments and lead

Where a porch, a bay or a garage roof meets the main wall, lead is the detail most often skimped. A proprietary flashing strip stuck over a mortar joint is not a substitute and it lets go at the top edge first.

Valleys

Dry valley troughs that were laid short, or with the tiles cut tight against them so debris cannot wash through, back water up under the covering in heavy rain.

Extension flat roofs

The other regular call here is a single storey extension with a flat roof that holds water after every shower. That is not normal and it is not cosmetic. A roof with no fall finds its weakest point eventually, and by then the deck underneath is usually wet across a much wider area than the stain on the ceiling suggests. We strip back, replace what has gone soft and build the fall back in with firrings rather than laying a new surface over a dead flat, sagging deck.

Wind off open ground

The land either side of the A11 here is flat and farmed, and the newer estates sit on it without much in the way of shelter. After a serious blow the calls are lifted verges, ridge tiles down and a tile or two off an exposed gable. Where the weather allows we will make a roof safe on the first visit and come back to do the permanent repair properly. Most policies cover storm damage and exclude gradual wear, so we photograph the damage in place before we touch anything and write the report in the detail an insurer will actually want.

The older centre

In the middle of the town the roofs are pantile and slate and the faults are the traditional ones: slipped tiles where the nib or the nail has failed, failed lead at chimneys, and valleys that have filled with moss. On a pantile repair we match new or reclaimed so the patch does not sit there advertising itself from the road.

What you get

We trace the leak back to its source rather than to the nearest stain, photograph what we find and what we do about it, and give you a straight view on whether the repair will hold. If a roof is past repairing we will say so rather than take money for a patch we do not believe in.