Roof repairs in Cromer

Roofs in Cromer age faster than roofs inland and the reason is not the rain. It is the salt in the air and the fact that the wind arrives off the sea with nothing in front of it. Salt accelerates corrosion on every nail, clip and flashing on the outside of the building, and sustained wind spends every winter looking for an edge that is not fixed down.

Nail sickness on the cliff top slate

Slate outlives its own fixings by a very long way, and on this coast the gap is wider still. A Victorian or Edwardian villa here will commonly have slate that is still perfectly sound sitting on nails that have corroded through. The symptom is slates slipping in ones and twos, usually starting on the seaward slope. One or two is a repair and we will refix them properly with a hook or a tingle rather than smearing mortar across the course. Slipping across every slope means the nails have gone generally, and at that point patching becomes an annual bill. We will tell you which of the two you have got rather than keep coming back.

Wind driven rain finds the detail, not the middle

On an exposed roof the water does not come in through the middle of a slope. It is driven horizontally into the places where the roof stops: the verge, the abutment where a slope meets a wall, the back gutter behind a chimney and the flashing around a dormer cheek. That is where we look first, and it is why a repair that concentrates on the most visible damage often does not hold.

Storm damage

After a serious blow the damage on this coast is typically lifted verges, ridge tiles off and slates stripped from a seaward slope. Where the weather allows we will make a roof safe on the first visit and come back for the permanent repair. Most policies cover storm damage and exclude gradual wear, so what usually decides a claim is the evidence rather than the damage. We photograph it in place before we touch it and write the report in the detail insurers ask for.

Flint and the older frontages

Flint and brick walling behaves differently from a plain brick elevation, and the junction where a roof meets it needs forming in lead rather than filling with mortar. Mortar cracks against flint, the crack opens, and water tracks into the wall behind it. We form the detail properly.

What you get from us

We trace the leak to its source rather than to the nearest stain, photograph before and after, and fix for the exposure the property actually has rather than using an inland detail on a cliff top roof. If the covering has reached the end we will tell you plainly instead of selling you a repair that will not last the winter.