Somebody knocks on the door, says they were working up the road, points at your roof and tells you it is in a bad way. Sometimes they are right. More often the roof has fifteen years in it and the actual problem costs a few hundred pounds to put right.
1. Are the tiles failing, or the fixings?
Clay pantiles hang on a small projection called a nib. When enough of those have snapped, tiles start slipping in ones and twos, usually after wind. That is not the tile failing, it is age, and the fix is a re-lay rather than a new roof.
2. What do the battens look like?
This is the one that actually decides it. Battens and felt from before about 1980 are usually finished, and there is no way to replace them without taking the covering off. If a roofer cannot tell you what state the battens are in, they have not been on the roof.
3. Is it the roof or is it the chimney?
A great many "the roof is leaking" calls are a chimney. Lead flashing that was bedded on the brick rather than chased into it lets go after a decade or so, and the water runs down inside the stack and appears yards from where it got in.
4. How old is it, honestly?
A clay pantile roof laid properly is good for eighty years or more in the tile and around forty in the battens and felt. Concrete interlocking tile from the seventies is nearer fifty. If nobody has touched it since it was built and it is over forty, budget for it even if it is not leaking yet.
If you want it settled rather than guessed at, a survey costs £180, comes back with photographs from the roof, and we refund it against any work over £2,000.
