On the Roof

An unseasonably warm February day with no breeze, so Martin decided to tackle the missing tile we spotted on the main roof.









Access was possible via the flat roof, with the scaffolding box we've had in the garage for years. 

It took a while to find where we'd stored all the bits to put it together mind you (a garage tidy may be in order!)


Anyway, the job was soon done - and the views from the top were some consolation for the hassle of putting the scaffolding together:

Job Done!

And down comes the scaffolding . . . just short of a week after it went up.

Can't say they didn't make good progress!

They've done a tidy job as well.

We now have a nice new slate roof - hopefully watertight for years to come . . .

Men at Work

The men were back bright and early today to continue the roofing work.

The last of the old tiles came off , and good progress was made on the getting the new tiles on.

They did have to replace a rotten end board first, but it didn't seem to delay things too much.


The porch tiles were among the last to go, and we managed to capture the process via GarageCam.

Not the best quality images, but you can see the old tiles (with their makeshift gutter), stripped off to the old battening, stripped down further, then tyveked, re-battened, and tiled anew.

About a day's work in all (although they were tiling other bits at the same time) - they've done a awful lot in just the last couple of days - but there's still a fair chunk of tiling to finish, plus the fiddly bits of leadwork and so on.  Getting there!

Off with the Old / On with the New

We'd identified 2014 as the year of major roofing works and that work started today.


Time to get rid of the old (starting to leak) concrete tiles on the lower and porch roof sections . . .




. . . and replace them with slate to match in with the main house roof. Unfortunately we couldn't quite run to Welsh slate - but the Iberian equivalent looks pretty good!

We even managed to sell on the old tiles for a few quid, saving the cost to dispose of them at the same time.


By the end of today, the concrete tiles were mostly gone, and the slate was going on:

It'll be a few days yet mind you - at least the weather forecast is good!

Guttered . . .

The leaking roof is becoming something of a theme here . . .


This time it's the porch roof, where the water run off from the drain pipe had eroded away at the concrete tiles to the point where water was getting in where the roof meets the window pane.


We'd known for a while that we needed to look at the lounge roof (which also has concrete tiles) and where we'd been told the underlying roofing felt was rotting away.  So it looks like 2014 will see some major roofing works!



In the meantime, we've solved the immediate problem by fixing an extra piece of guttering between the drainpipe and the porch gutter.

Keeping the Rain Out!

We'd known for a while that the flat roof over the utility / shower room needed some attention (see left), and finally got around to sorting out some quotes for a new roof this summer.


Having decided on a 'polyroof' system, that comes with a 20 year guarantee, we had to wait a while for the right combination of weather and builder availability, but it finally all came together this week.

The new roof deck . . .

The builders stripped off the old roof, which as it turned out was soaking wet and partially rotten - there was also a distinct lack of insulation, which goes some way to explaining why the shower room gets so cold in the winter!

. . .  with a coat of glass fibre.

New insulation was packed into the roof space, which will hopefully make everything much warmer now.  A new roofing deck of exterior plywood fitted, and then this was topped with layers of glass fibre.




Finally a weatherproof topcoat, and some new lead flashing, and now it all looks very smart - and more importantly is hopefully equally good at keeping the rain out!