Roofers in Birdham

Birdham is a parish of flat, low-lying land. The county history gives it 1,814 acres, and its northern boundary is the channel of Chichester Harbour. There are no hills here to break the weather, so a gale crossing the water meets the village's roofs with very little in its way. That is no reason for alarm, but it is a reason for care with the details that wind and driving rain test first: the ridge capping, the verges at gable ends and the lower courses of tiles along the eaves. A roof that has been sound for years can still have one of those details quietly working loose, and the first you hear of it is a tile on the drive after a night of gales.

1.1 Fixings that hold when the wind gets up

The ridge runs along the summit of a pitched roof, and the verge is the angled edge beside a gable wall. On older roofs both were often bedded in mortar alone. Under the 2014 revision of BS 5534, ridge and hip tiles can no longer depend on mortar by itself, so they get mechanical fixings: clips, screws, or a dry-fix system tested to BS 8612:2018. A hip is the slanting external corner of a hipped roof. When we survey a Birdham house we press and photograph the capping, look for fresh gaps in the bedding, and tell you whether a few tiles can be refixed or a whole run needs rebuilding. Our roof repairs page covers the jobs that are really only a morning's work.

1.2 Harbour National Landscape and the Somerley boundary

Birdham sits inside Chichester Harbour National Landscape, which was designated an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty on 4 February 1964 and renamed a National Landscape in 2023. Chichester District Council has also published a notice for the Somerley Conservation Area that names Birdham among the parishes it lies in, though Somerley is not the village itself. A glance from the road will not show which side of a boundary a house falls on, so before planning any roof change, ask the council whether your address is inside it. For anything that alters a roof's shape, our guide to skylight planning permission is the place to start.

The old farms around Birdham left behind barns and outbuildings of brick, thatch and weather-boarded timber framing, and many of them have been converted, extended or re-roofed since. Alongside them sit the garages, utility rooms and kitchen extensions every village acquires, and these usually have flat roofs. Flat roofs have to be laid to a slope, called a fall, so rainwater runs off. BS 6229:2025 sets a minimum finished fall of 1:80, and roofers usually design steeper, around 1:40, so the roof still drains once it is finished. On flat ground with open sky, a roof that holds a puddle for days is telling you something.

3.1 How long a flat covering lasts

GreenSpec gives EPDM, a synthetic rubber sheet, an expected service life of 20 to 30 years, and Less (updated March 2026) puts GRP, a glass-fibre reinforced plastic, at 25 to 40 years. These are typical figures, not promises, and edge details, drainage and the deck beneath matter as much as the covering. If a roof is old and patched, we explain whether another repair will hold or the sounder call is a new deck and covering. Our flat roofing page describes the coverings we fit and what moves the price.

3.2 Older sheeting, wildlife and waste

The HSE advice is to treat a building constructed or refurbished before 2000 as holding asbestos until it has been checked, and cement sheeting on an old outbuilding is one place it turns up. Asbestos cement counts as non-licensed work only while it is handled with care and not broken up. Once it is substantially damaged the job becomes notifiable, and the waste travels with a consignment note, so the material is tested before anyone touches it. Barns and old roof spaces can also hold bats and nesting birds, which are protected by law, and if we see signs we stop and tell you first. A conversion that has turned an old barn into a home often leaves a roof that was never designed for the use it now has, with insulation added beneath and ventilation overlooked. We ask how the building is used before we say whether a repair will do.