Roofers in Rowlands Castle

In 1859 the Portsmouth to London railway opened with a station at Rowlands Castle, and the village grew considerably afterwards, gathering on The Green. East Hampshire's conservation area leaflet describes the buildings that front the Green as mainly nineteenth century: groups of stylised terraces, densely built next to one another. A terrace is a set of roofs that share fate. The slope may belong to your house, but the party wall, the stack sitting on it and the gutter running along the front are often tied to the house beside you. That does not make repairs difficult, but it does mean the survey has to look sideways as well as up.

1.1 Shared walls, stacks and gutters

A party wall is the wall two houses share, and a chimney stack often straddles it, one flue for each side. Where flashing round that stack fails, water runs down inside the wall and appears on the neighbour's ceiling just as readily as on yours. Check the lead and the brickwork together. Our chimney repairs page explains how stacks are repointed, rebuilt and made watertight again. Should you be planning to remove a chimney breast indoors, Building Regulations approval always applies to that, since the breast carries structural weight, and a breast on a party wall can raise party wall questions with the neighbour too. Ask us before you commit to the plan, and we will explain the order the two things happen in.

1.2 Slipped tiles and the view from the pavement

Terraces face the street, which makes a slipped tile or a wandering ridge easy to spot from the pavement and easy to put off. Photographs from the ground can only show so much. We climb up, photograph every fault close to, and give you a verdict: will a few tiles cure it, or is the whole slope spent? We also do not guess a covering's age from the street. Some terraces have been re-roofed since they were built, and the battens and underlay beneath may be younger or older than the tiles on top. Matching matters in a terrace, because a new section next to old work shows from the Green. Where we replace tiles we match colour and profile as closely as supply allows, and we keep the lines of ridge, eaves and verge level with the neighbours so the whole run still reads as one roofline.

Rowlands Castle is in Hampshire, and that shapes the paperwork. East Hampshire District Council is the local planning authority and its building control team covers the village. The village has a conservation area, and because a slice of the area moved across the county boundary to West Sussex in 1992, a house near the edge should confirm which side of the line it sits on before any application is made. The Article 4 direction on East Hampshire's website concerns turning employment buildings into homes; it removes no roof rights, though the conservation area still deserves a phone call to the planners if a new roof is going to look different.

3.1 When a roof job needs building control

Replacing a roof covering sometimes triggers Building Regulations. Approved Document L asks for insulation to be improved when more than 50 per cent of the surface of a roof is renovated, and a replacement covering that adds 15 per cent or more to the weight calls for building control and a structural check. We explain whichever applies, and where a notice has to go in, it goes in from us.

3.2 Garages and outbuildings built before 2000

Many houses here have a garage or outbuilding whose roof needs attention too. For a garage or shed built or refurbished before 2000, the HSE advises working on the basis that asbestos is there until a check proves otherwise. If a garage roof is cement sheeting, careful handling matters, and breaking it up changes the rules, so tell us about it when you ring and nobody touches it until it has been identified. Asbestos cement that is weathered but not badly damaged can be removed carefully as non-licensed work, while a roof that has broken up is notifiable. Any asbestos waste leaving a home travels with a consignment note. We explain which case yours is before any price is agreed.

3.3 Scaffolding on a Hampshire road

Hampshire County Council is the highway authority here, so a scaffold that occupies the road or pavement is licensed by Hampshire. The county's own page describes the scaffold firm lodging it for the householder. The council wants ten full working days between applying and the earliest start, charges £211.90 for the first two weeks and £72 for each fortnight added, and gives no extensions. If the job runs past the licensed period, a fresh application is needed. That is the reason we plan the programme tightly and leave the scaffold standing only while the work requires it.