Roofers in Barns Green

Barns Green began as a hamlet at Slaughterford, which from the late Middle Ages grew into the main settlement of Itchingfield parish. The oldest buildings still carry that story in their walls. The parish history records that houses here were timber-framed until about 1700 or later, and that many were afterwards bricknogged (the gaps between the timbers filled with brick) or covered in weatherboard. The Queen's Head is the village example: a timber-framed building of the 17th century that was cased in brick in the 19th. Under a roof like that, the structure is not a modern engineered box. Rafters settle, walls lean a little, and a ridge (the capping along the top of the roof) that looks straight from the road may run in a gentle curve.

1.1 Why an old frame changes the way we survey

A new covering needs an even surface to lie on. On a frame that has moved for three centuries, that surface does not exist until somebody makes it. Before we price a re-roof, the survey looks at the line of the ridge, the shape of each slope and the timbers visible from the loft. Photographs of every fault go with the written quote, which carries one total price. If the frame needs packing pieces to bring the battens (the cross-timbers that carry the tiles) back to a true plane, you hear about it at the survey, with the scaffold still in the yard. Our pitched roofing page describes stripping a slope, relaying it and bringing it back to a sound line. On a house with this much history in its walls, that patient first look is most of the skill, and it is the part a quick quote from the pavement cannot give you.

1.2 Brick casing, weatherboard and the joints between

Casing a frame in brick, or hanging weatherboard on it, leaves joints where the roof edge has to meet a different wall. At a gable end the verge (where the roof covering stops at the gable wall) must be sealed against brick that sits slightly proud of the old frame. At a chimney or a wall abutment the flashing (a band of lead dressed between roof and wall to keep water out) needs a clean groove cut into the mortar joint, never a smear of sealant. Weatherboard sheds water downwards, so the covering has to run out over the top of the boards with a gap left for air. Water finds the single weak joint, which is why a stain on a bedroom ceiling in a house like this often sits a metre from the real fault. We trace it from the outside first.

Two dates from the village's own record frame its building history: the hall of 1887, raised for Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee, and the three- and four-bedroomed houses of Lime Avenue, still being built in 1965. Between them lie almost eight decades of roofs, and a Barns Green street can mix several. An 1880s roof will probably have been repaired or covered over more than once. A 1960s one may be on its original covering, which is a different problem: everything on it is the same age at once.

3.1 A roof sixty years on

Marley puts the expected life of a concrete tile at around 60 years and says that is not a guarantee. A house finished in 1965 is now past that mark. If the original tiles are still up there, the question is less whether the tiles can be saved than whether the felt beneath them still sheds water when a tile slips. We lift a few tiles at the eaves and in the middle of a slope, photograph the underlay and the batten ends, and give a verdict in plain words: refix, overhaul or re-roof. Where the tiles are sound and the underlay is not, relaying them over a new membrane can be the smaller job that properly fixes it. Where cracks run across many tiles, patching stops being kind to your money.

3.2 Garages, outbuildings and older sheeting

The HSE advises assuming asbestos is present in anything built or refurbished before 2000 until a check says otherwise. In a village with 1960s houses that can include a garage roof, a lean-to or an outbuilding, and nobody should break up a sheet of unknown material. Carefully handled asbestos cement sheeting is non-licensed work. If it starts to break up and make dust, the job becomes notifiable non-licensed work, and any asbestos waste from a home goes out under a consignment note. Fragile roofing is also a fall risk, because cement sheeting and old rooflights will not take a person's weight. We have a suspect sheet tested before anything is lifted, and then explain what the result means for the job, the skip and the timing.

3.3 What a Barns Green survey puts in writing

Whatever the era, you get a quote in writing, one total price, once we have been up there. It arrives with photographs of your own roof, so you can see the slipped course, the cracked verge or the failed felt for yourself. Whoever quotes you, ask whether the number covers VAT and the scaffold. At the end of the job we clear the site and take the rubbish away, so nothing is left in your drive.