We repair pitched and flat roofs throughout the county, on pantile, plain tile, slate and stone coverings, and we always look for what caused the defect as well as fixing the defect itself.
Repairs on single-lap pantile roofs
Pantiles and double-Roman tiles interlock rather than overlapping in three layers, so there's very little redundancy built in. A cracked tile, a slipped tile or a poorly bedded verge lets water land straight on the underlay, and older bitumen underlay tends to perish within a few years of being asked to do that job.
A proper repair replaces the tile with a genuine match — profile, gauge and colour — and checks the underlay beneath it rather than just assuming it's intact.
What moss does to a Somerset roof
- Holds water against the tile surface right through the winter
- Lifts tile tails, breaking the seal between courses
- Washes into gutters and downpipes, blocking them and flooding the eaves
- Speeds up frost damage on porous concrete and older clay tiles
- Hides slipped and cracked tiles from view from the ground
Damp that is not a roof leak
A good number of the 'leaks' we're called to in Somerset actually turn out to be condensation. A roof that's been over-insulated at the eaves without ventilation, or sprayed with foam, can't dry out — and in this climate that shows up as damp patches, black staining on the underside of the felt and wet insulation.
We check for both. Fixing a tile won't cure a ventilation problem, so it's worth knowing which one you actually have before spending any money.
Stone and heritage repairs
On Mendip stone and lias roofs we salvage and re-lay original material wherever we can, match reclaimed stone where we can't, and use appropriate lime-based bedding rather than hard cement, which cracks and traps water against the stone.
