Roofers in Lyneham

When a house is let on and off, small jobs slip. A landlord assumes the tenant will report a drip, and a tenant assumes the landlord is watching the slopes. Where service families have come and gone for years, that gap is easy to see in the roofs. The covering looks tolerable from the road, but the gutters have not been cleared in years and the tile edge at the eaves has gone green.

The first visit to a roof like this is an inspection, not a quote. We look from the ground, then from a ladder or scaffold at the eaves, then from the loft, checking the timbers by lamp and with a damp meter where they call for it. The loft often tells the truth that the slope hides. Stained boarding, rusting nail tips poking through the underlay and a smell of damp are all clues to a long-term leak.

Once a covering is spent, the choice lies between re-covering part of it and replacing the lot. A full replacement means stripping the old tiles, renewing battens and underlay, and fitting the new covering with verges and ridges done to current standards. If the roof is 15 per cent heavier or more after the change, Building Regulations approval is needed. Where the work affects most of the roof, an upgrade to the insulation may be required as well. What a full job involves is described under roof replacement, though a run of small leaks does not always mean a new roof.

For a landlord with several properties, we can inspect and report on each roof separately, with photographs, so decisions are made house by house. For an owner-occupier buying a former service home, a roof report before exchange is often the cheapest way to avoid a surprise afterwards.

The hamlet of Preston, about a mile south-east of Lyneham, has two farmhouses from the 17th and 18th centuries. Farmhouses of this age are often large, with long roofs and wide eaves, and what they cover can include a main house, a rear wing and several outbuildings added at different dates. The roof is rarely a single roof. Three or four are often joined, and every junction offers water a way in.

The first task is mapping. We note where each section meets another, where the pitch changes and where a lean-to has been tied into an older wall. Valleys between sections are checked for lead splits or mortar failure. Stepped flashings against gable walls are looked at for gaps where the wall has settled away from the metal.

Timbers in older farmhouses vary a great deal. The oldest rafters may be oak, hewn rather than sawn, with softwood added later for repairs. We check the bearing at the wall, because a rafter foot that has rotted away leaves the roof pushing outwards on the wall head. If we find signs of movement, we flag it and recommend a structural opinion before covering work begins.

Outbuildings are the other half of a farm roof. Barns and stores may have corrugated sheet roofs, and some older sheets are asbestos cement. Under HSE rules, taking intact sheets away with care is non-licensed work, and heavy breakage turns it into notifiable work. The material is confirmed first, and waste leaves with us.

For barn conversions or large farmhouse projects, a phased approach works well: make the roof watertight first, then plan the rest. Our commercial roofing page covers larger buildings and estate roofs, where the scale and access need different planning. Farm owners often need a roof that works for working buildings and for the house, and the survey separates the two.