Roofers in Oldland Common

Felt hat-making once employed half the working population of Oldland Common. A village with a trading past like that tends to end up with working buildings of every size: workshops, stores, yards, small units and shops. Their roofs matter to the people who rely on them, because a leak damages stock and stops work.

Commercial roofs are usually larger and lower in pitch than house roofs, and they are made of different things. Profiled metal or fibre-cement sheets are fixed with screws or bolts through the sheet, and the fixings loosen or the sheet cracks. Single-ply membranes, such as PVC or TPO, are welded at the seams, and a seam can open. Built-up felt blisters and splits. Rooflights, which let daylight through, have their own seals and frames, and these age faster than the sheeting around them.

Old cement sheeting needs particular care. Where the roofing sheets are asbestos cement, the HSE sorts the job by how it is done: carefully lifting sound sheets counts as non-licensed work, and reducing them to debris moves it into the notifiable category. That is a reason not to scrape, drill or pressure wash them, and a reason to have a roof identified before it is touched. What we offer is a proper assessment first and a clear plan for the sheets.

Planning a commercial job means working round the business. We agree access, phasing and safe routes so that stock, staff and customers are kept clear of the work. Commercial roofs are priced on survey, not on a guess from the street. Our commercial roofing page explains how the survey and the written specification work.

Fixings deserve a separate look on metal sheet roofs. Screws that have backed out or lost their washers let water follow the thread into the building, and the repair is to replace them and reseal, not to coat the whole sheet.

No roof lasts by luck. The buildings in Oldland Common that have lasted since the early Victorian period have done so on a pattern of small repairs made at the right time. A slipped slate replaced the week it slipped does not become a wet batten. A cleared gutter does not become a rotten fascia. A re-pointed ridge does not become a collapsed one.

The routine is not complicated. Look at the roof from the ground after any storm. Check the gutters after leaf fall. Watch the ceilings under the roof for new marks. If a stain appears, find the source before it dries, because staining after the water has gone is much harder to trace. And book a proper inspection every so often, covering the slopes hidden from the street.

Chimneys deserve a mention. A stack stands high, takes weather on every face and sits on the line between the roof and the house. Cracked pointing, loose flaunching and lifted lead are the usual faults, and a small repair at the top costs far less than the damp patch it prevents on the breast below.

A village with a railway path running through it has plenty of walkers and cyclists passing the front of the houses, and a slipped tile is often spotted from the path before the owner sees it. If a neighbour mentions one, take it seriously.

When we survey, we give you the repairs in order of urgency, with photographs, so you can choose what is done now and what is left for later. Our roof replacement and pitched roofing pages explain when a larger job makes more sense than another round of patching.

A quick look through the loft hatch each autumn, with a torch, will show daylight through the covering and damp on the timbers long before the ceiling below is marked.