Roofers in Liss

Liss as a trading village is younger than its name suggests. The conservation area leaflet from East Hampshire District Council explains that the railway arrived just as land came free under the Enclosure Act of 1845, and that the shops and business of the place drifted away from the older settlement at West Liss. The new streets were built for the railway age. The leaflet names Victorian pairs or terraces of houses, put up after the line opened and into the very early 1900s, as the commonest type. Liss Conservation Area was designated in 1990. Roofs from the railway decades reward a slow look before anyone lifts a tile.

1.1 Slate on Shotterfield Terrace

Shotterfield Terrace is the leaflet's example of slate roofs over red and brown brick. Slate fails in a few predictable ways. The nail rusts through, the slate slides down, and rain blows into the gap. One slate that has slid out of place can be held by a tingle, a small metal strap that hooks over the batten (the timber lath each course hangs from) and turns up over the slate's lower edge, leaving the courses above untouched. Cracked slates are exchanged singly. When the nails have gone across a whole slope, patching wastes your money, and the better answer is to lift the slope, fit new battens and underlay (the membrane beneath the slates), then relay the sound slates plus matching ones. You see that verdict in photographs of your own roof before we talk price.

1.2 Banded plain tile and patterned courses

Patterned banded plain tile roofs sit alongside slate in the leaflet's list of typical details. A band is a stripe of decorative plain tiles, with fish-scale or clipped corners, worked into the ordinary courses. No builders' merchant stocks a ready match, so repairs call for salvaged tiles or a made-to-measure copy in the same shape and colour. We photograph the pattern first and rebuild it in the same order. On the roof's crest, the ridge tiles and the hip tiles at the sloping corners are held by screws or clips as well as the mortar bed, since mortar on its own stopped being relied upon when BS 5534 was revised in 2014. Our pitched roofing service shows what stripping and relaying a slope involves.

Liss lies in the Rother valley between the Hangers and Hill Brow, and the village is inside the South Downs National Park. For a roofing job that matters in two ways. The first is who you ask, and it is easy to guess wrongly, because the Park Authority has its own office and its own planning pages. In this part of the Park, East Hampshire District Council deals with planning applications for the Park Authority, and building control stays with the district council as well. The person to ring about a re-roof, a new roof window or a loft room is therefore at East Hampshire, though the land is in the Park. The second is how closely a change of appearance is watched. Before adding a roof window, read our skylight planning permission guide.

3.1 Trees, leaves and shaded slopes

Beneath overhanging trees, gutters and valleys silt up with leaf litter, and moss spreads over slopes that never see much sun. A choked valley spills sideways under the tiles, which is why we look there when a ceiling stain appears under a slope that seems sound from the drive. Photographs taken along the gutter line and into the valley usually settle the question in minutes, and they let you see what we see. Clearing channels and treating moss is the simplest upkeep a roof can have, and our roof cleaning and moss removal service explains how it is done without scarring the covering. When the stain turns out to be a failed flashing or a lost slate, the cure is a small job, and our roof repairs service covers those.

3.2 Scaffold and start dates in Hampshire

Liss is in Hampshire, and the highways there answer to Hampshire County Council. A scaffold that occupies the carriageway or footway needs a Highways Act 1980 licence, which Hampshire County Council issues; its own guidance says the scaffold firm applies for its customers. Hampshire asks that ten clear working days pass between the request and the planned first day on site. The fee is £211.90 for the first two weeks and £72 for each further two weeks, and extensions are not offered, so the scaffold is booked for the whole job rather than in instalments. We plan the programme backwards from that notice. A sound roof gets a start date that suits the weather and the licence, whereas a leak gets stopped before the rest is planned. Whichever applies, one total price is put to you in writing after the survey, and any quote you hold should say whether VAT and scaffolding sit inside it.