Roofers in Purbrook

The oldest roofs in Purbrook cluster around St John's church, and Havant Borough Council protects them as the St John's Conservation Area, first designated in 1985 and reviewed in June 1994. The council's character appraisal singles out three buildings: a flint church, a flint school and a red brick chapel. Each wears a different roof, and all three sit within a short walk of one another. That is a useful lesson for anyone with an older house nearby. Before anybody proposes changing a roof in a conservation area, somebody should look at it properly and say what is actually wrong.

1.1 Plain clay tile on a flint church

J P Harrison designed the church, built in 1843 in an Early English style, in flint with stone dressings under a plain clay tile roof. Plain tiles are small and flat. Each one hangs from a softwood batten, the lath the course hooks over, by two nibs cast into its back, and every course laps the one beneath, which is why such a roof is thick, steep and quick to shed rain. Because every tile is separate, a cracked one comes out and a matching salvaged one goes in while its neighbours are left alone. That makes a sound plain tile roof a repair candidate far more often than an owner expects. The church is still in Anglican use, so its own repairs go through the faculty system rather than the council, but the houses around it share the setting and the roof type.

1.2 The school and its steeply pitched roofs

The neighbouring school, built in the middle of the 19th century, has flint walls, stone and brick dressings and steeply pitched plain tile roofs. Steep pitches forgive water but not loose edges. The verge, the sloping edge that finishes a gable, and the hips, the angled ridges at the outer corners, take the full force of a gale. A ridge bedded on mortar alone falls short of BS 5534 as revised in 2014, which adds a clip or screw. Where a steep slope runs into a flint wall or a chimney stack, a strip of lead flashing seals the junction, and that junction is where an old roof most often lets go. Our pitched roofing page walks through stripping a tiled slope and relaying it.

1.3 Welsh slate on the former chapel

The former Methodist chapel is red brick under Welsh slate. CORC says slate, if well maintained, can last 100 years or more, so on an old slate roof the slate itself is often still sound. The nails and the lead let it down. A slipped slate is held back in place by a tingle, a strip of metal bent to clip it without disturbing the course above, and the flashings round the stacks are renewed where they have split. Our slate roofing page covers the wider job.

Most callers want a price before anyone knows what is wrong. We turn that round. You get a verdict on the roof first, backed by photographs of your own slopes, and the verdict names the smallest job that will hold. Only after that does a figure appear, and it is a written one.

3.2 When a repair holds, and when it does not

A few scattered slipped tiles on a sound roof are a repair. Fixings that have failed across a whole slope are not, because every tile you replace sits beside one about to go. Marley gives a minimum life of 60 years for clay tiles, though old peg tile roofs may not follow that figure and a quoted lifespan is never a promise. Under the Planning Portal's guidance a re-roof usually needs no building control application when less than 25 per cent of the total building envelope and less than 50 per cent of the roof is affected, while a new covering at least 15 per cent heavier than the old one does need approval. Havant Borough Council's building control team, or a registered building control approver, confirms the position, and we manage the notification where one is due.