The short answer
Much of a roof can be checked safely from the pavement or garden using binoculars or a phone zoom, plus a look in the loft. You are looking for tiles or slates that have shifted, split or vanished, a dipping ridge, damaged chimney pointing and lifted lead, plus overflowing gutters. What you cannot see from below is the condition of flat roofs, valleys and gutters hidden behind parapets, so those need a closer survey.
Why the ground is the safest place to start
Anyone who has watched a ladder slide on wet paving knows the risk, and a roof is not a place to experiment. Slate and clay tiles crack under a boot, wet moss is slippery, and a roof edge gives no second chance. A ground-level check costs nothing, puts nobody at risk and tells you a surprising amount.
It also gives you a sensible order of work. If the view from below shows nothing wrong, you may only need to repeat the check next season. If it shows something, you can ring a roofer with a clear description, and the visit that follows is shorter and better targeted.
The aim is not to replace a survey. It is to spot problems early, while a repair is small. A single slipped slate noticed in October is a modest job. The same slate ignored through a wet winter can let water into the batten and the rafter below it.
How to look: kit, light and angle
You need very little. A pair of binoculars is ideal, and a phone camera with zoom works well, because you can enlarge the photograph afterwards and see detail the eye misses. Choose a dry day with low, side-on light, since raking light picks out lifted edges and uneven courses. Flat midday glare hides them.
Walk all the way round the house. Look at each slope from as far back as the garden or street allows, because standing too close makes the angle too steep to read. Where a neighbour's property gives a better view, you can ask them, or look from an upstairs window across to a lower roof.
Take photographs of every slope on the same visit each year, from the same spot. A set of pictures taken the same way lets you compare one year with the next, and a roofer will find them useful when you describe a problem.
Never lean out of an upstairs window to get a better angle, and never step onto a flat roof or an extension roof to look at the main one. A roof you cannot see safely needs a surveyor with proper access gear.
What you can spot from below
Run through the roof in a fixed order so nothing is missed.
- Tiles and slates. Look for gaps in the pattern, slipped slates hanging below their course, cracked or chipped pieces, and areas where the lines no longer run straight. Slate that has lost its nails slides down in a visible way.
- Ridge and hips. The ridge is the top line where two slopes meet. A dip, a gap or crumbling mortar under the ridge tiles suggests the bedding is failing.
- Verges. A verge is where a gable-end roof finishes at the wall, running up the slope. Check that the mortar or dry-fix edge is intact and that nothing is lifting in the wind.
- Chimneys. Look for cracked or missing pointing, leaning pots, and a strip of lead at the base that is lifting or bright where it has torn.
- Moss and growth. A heavy mat of moss holds water against the covering. Plants growing from a stack or a gutter are a sign of long-standing damp.
- Gutters. Look for sagging runs, joints that drip, overflow marks on the wall, and green staining behind a downpipe.
Staining on the walls below the roofline is as telling as anything on the roof. A dark tide mark down brickwork or stone usually means water is escaping from a gutter or a flashing above it.
A look inside the loft
The inside of the roof is the other half of a ground-level check, and you can do it from a safe loft hatch with a torch. Stay on the hatch ladder or proper boards, because the ceiling below will not carry you.
Pinpricks of daylight in the roof space mark a gap. Check the timbers for dark, damp patches, especially around the chimney, in valleys and beneath the lowest course of slates. Feel the insulation: if it is wet or flattened, water has been coming through. Check the underside of the covering for droplets or a wet sheen, which can point to condensation in a poorly ventilated loft rather than a leak.
Look at the underlay too. That is the membrane laid beneath the battens to catch rain driven past the covering. On older roofs it can be missing, torn or brittle. Sagging underlay that holds water is a common find.
If you find a stain, mark its edge with a pencil and date it. Look again after the next heavy rain. A mark that has grown is active. For a deeper look at the roof space, see our page on a roof inspection checklist.
What you cannot judge from the ground
Some parts of a roof are simply out of sight, however good the binoculars. Flat roofs are the main example, since you see only an edge. Their faults, such as ponding, blistering and open seams, are on the surface. Valleys and parapet gutters, which are channels lined with lead or another metal and often hidden behind a wall, cannot be judged from below either. The same applies to the fixings under a slate, how sound the timber battens are, and the lead behind a chimney.
A pole camera or a drone can fill some of these gaps without anyone climbing. To see how that works, read about a pole camera roof inspection. For a listed or historic building, where small details matter, a closer look is usually justified, and the page on a historic roof survey describes what that involves.
The honest limit of a ground check is that it tells you whether to worry, not how much. A suspicious sign from below is a reason to book a proper look, not to guess.
When to call a roofer rather than keep looking
Ring someone if you see any of the following: a stain that is spreading on a ceiling, light through the roof, a ridge or slope that dips, several slipped or missing slates or tiles, lifted or torn lead, or rain streaking down a wall. After a storm, check the roof promptly and photograph any damage before anything is moved, since pictures help if you later need to talk to an insurer.
There is no charge for our survey, we photograph your own roof, and the fixed price follows in writing. Storm damage is something we prioritise, and a roof that is actively leaking gets made safe first. The best use of your own check is to tell us what you saw, where, and when it started.
If you are also weighing up a lease-end or tenancy question, our page on a roof dilapidations survey explains that process, and for landlords the page on landlord roof inspection sets out a routine. The wider roof inspections service covers the closer survey.
