Roofers in Priddy

A roof in a lowland street is shielded on most sides. A roof near the summit of the Mendips is not. The wind meets the slope square on, rain is driven up the covering rather than falling straight down it, and a wet, cold winter at that height is hard on any covering. None of that is dramatic in a single season. It shows up over time, as small movements that eventually let water through.

The first place to look is the fixing. Slates and tiles are held by nails or clips, and a corroded nail gives way long before the slate beneath it has worn out. On an exposed slope, a slate that has lost its nail will slide and then lift, and the courses around it take extra wind as a result. Our approach is to find out whether the failure is local or general. A few slipped slates on an otherwise sound roof can be refixed with a tingle, a thin lead or copper tab bent up under the tail of the slate. A roof showing the same loose pattern on every slope has reached the end of its fixings.

The next layer matters just as much. Underlay is a sheet draped over the rafters and held down by the battens, the cross-timbers that the slates or tiles hang from. It catches wind-blown rain and leads it to the gutter. On a high roof, rain is pushed past the joints more often, so a torn or brittle underlay shows itself through stained rafters and a damp loft long before any tile looks wrong from the ground.

Ridge and verge details deserve the same scrutiny. The 2014 edition of BS 5534 rules out mortar as the sole fixing for ridge and hip tiles, so repairs and new coverings add a clip or screw. A dry-fix ridge or verge, clipped and capped instead of bedded, is tested to BS 8612:2018, and it suits a gale-prone position well. The pitched roofing service covers the roof as a whole, from the timbers to the ridge line.

The Church of St Lawrence is the village's best-known listed building, Grade I and dating from the 13th century. Listing is not limited to churches. Farmhouses, cottages and outbuildings in a rural village can be listed too, and the protection extends to the roof. If your house is listed, Somerset Council must grant listed building consent first for anything that changes its character, and going ahead without it is a criminal matter.

Confirming the status of your own house falls to the council rather than to a roofer. What we can do is examine the roof, describe the intended work in specific terms and help you take that description to the planning team. Historic England maintains the National Heritage List for England, the official register, and an entry there tells you at once if a building is listed. That, plus a call to Somerset Council, answers the question for most owners within a day or two.

Work that is not listed still has a Building Regulations side. Building control approval is normally waived for small re-coverings, meaning work on under 25% of the envelope as a whole and on less than 50% of the roof itself. Bigger re-roofs do need it, and may trigger an insulation upgrade. Choosing a covering with 15% extra weight over the old one brings approval and a structural check into play. If an application is required, we submit it to Somerset Council's building control team or a registered building control approver.

Wild animals matter on a roof in open country. Bats are protected, as are nests in use, and a farmhouse or barn loft on the Mendips is a likelier home for either than a terrace in town. If we find signs, work stops and we talk to you before a single slate is lifted. A conversation with the council, if there is one, runs more smoothly when it begins early and the scope is clear. The roof replacement service describes the order of work on a complete re-cover.