Pitched roofs in Bury St Edmunds, Ely and Thetford

How pitched roofs works

A pitched roof does not usually fail all at once. The covering goes first in one place, water gets into the batten, the batten rots and lets go of the next fixing, and the failure spreads sideways along the course. Caught early it is a repair. Left alone it turns into a strip and re-cover, because the battens will no longer hold anything.

What decides between a repair and a re-cover is almost never the tiles. It is what is underneath them. If the battens are sound and the underlay has not perished, we will patch and move on. If the felt has torn at the eaves and the batten ends are soft, then re-fixing tiles onto it is money thrown away and we will say so.

On a full re-cover we strip back to the rafters so we can actually see the timber. That is the only point in the life of a roof where anything wrong with the structure is visible and cheap to put right, so it is worth doing properly: new treated batten, a breathable membrane, and the ridge and verge fixed mechanically rather than bedded.

Ventilation is the part of a pitched roof that gets forgotten. Once you put a breathable membrane and a dry ridge on, air has to be able to move from the eaves to the ridge, or you trade a leak for condensation dripping onto the insulation. It is designed in at the quote stage, not added afterwards when somebody notices damp in the loft.

Half the pitched roofs we are asked to look at have already been repaired by somebody else. Mortar smeared along a verge, a tile bedded in cement, foam sprayed underneath. None of it is cheaper in the end, because it all has to come off before the real repair can start, and the timber underneath has usually had another two wet winters.

What the job includes

• Strip, dispose of the old covering and inspect every rafter and batten
• New treated battens and a breathable membrane on any full re-cover
• Clay, concrete or slate to match what is already there, or an upgrade if you want one
• Dry ridge and dry verge systems, mechanically fixed rather than bedded in mortar
• New lead soakers and flashings where the roof meets a wall, chimney or valley
• Eaves protection, ventilation and the guttering reset properly at the end

Signs you need it looking at

• Tiles or slates that have slipped, cracked or gone missing after wind
• Daylight visible through the roof from inside the loft
• Sagging along the ridge or between the rafters
• Mortar dropping out of the ridge or the verge
• Damp patches on upstairs ceilings that come back every time it rains