A roof keeps the structure, the belongings and the people underneath it safe, yet it is the part of a building its owner sees least. Problems tend to show up indoors first, as a brown ring on a ceiling or a damp patch by a chimney breast, long after they started outside.
Our name is the promise we work to. We look for the actual route water is taking, we let you see the evidence in pictures taken on your roof, and we put it right with methods that hold when a gale comes in off the sea. Then we give you one written price and let you decide.
01
Tracing the water back to its source
Water rarely drips through directly below the hole that let it in. It slides down the felt or membrane beneath the covering, travels along the slim timbers that carry each course, or follows a rafter, and then turns up a few feet away. So we begin at the mark on your ceiling and work back towards the outside.
The usual culprits are flashings (strips of lead sealing the joint between roof and brickwork or a stack), valleys (the gully formed where two slopes join), the ridge (the capping run that crowns the roof), a gutter that has blocked or dropped, and moisture condensing in a cold loft. Each needs a different repair, and that is why the cause is pinned down before a figure is written.
02
Photographs of your own roof
You cannot easily see your own roof, and that is exactly what makes homeowners nervous after a storm, when someone knocks on the door claiming to have spotted a problem. We work the other way round.
During the survey we take pictures of every fault: the crumbling bedding mortar, the lead that has lifted, the slate that has slid, the split covering on a flat roof. Those pictures travel with the written price, and the proof stays with you. Show them to a relative, ask a second roofer about them, and take your time before agreeing to anything.
03
Fixed to stand up to sea weather
Houses here face gales, driving rain and salt air coming off the Channel. A repair that would last on a sheltered inland street can fail at the first winter storm on the coast, so how each piece is held down matters every bit as much as the material.
Since the 2014 revision of BS 5534, ridge and hip tiles on a new or relaid roof are no longer left to mortar on its own; mechanical fixings go in too. We secure ridges and verges (the open edge where tiles stop at a gable) in that way, we dress lead so it sits tight against the roof and the wall, and we choose fixings to suit how exposed the roof is. Smearing fresh mortar or sealant over an old fault is not work we put our name to.
04
Repair or replace, and the reason why
A sound roof with one failed valley needs a valley repair, not a new roof. A roof whose underlay has perished, whose battens are rotten and whose tiles keep slipping needs replacing, and patching it would only cost you more over the next few winters.
We tell you which of those you have and why, using the pictures to show the reasoning. Where repair and replacement are both reasonable, we set out what each one involves so the choice stays yours.
05
A written price, then a clean site
After the survey, a written quote follows, setting one overall sum against the work we advise. Our prices are good and fair. That total stands unless something the survey could not reach turns up once work begins, and then we talk it through with you before going further.
If the work needs consent, we explain it. Where a job is notifiable under the Building Regulations, we deal with that notice for you. At the end we sweep up, remove every bit of waste and walk you round what was done.
06
Homes, lets and commercial roofs
We work for homeowners, landlords and letting agents, and owners of shops, units and blocks of flats. The jobs range from roof repairs and chimney work to pitched, slate, flat and lead roofs, gutters, fascias and soffits, roof windows and full roof replacement.
The buildings vary as much as the jobs: Victorian and Edwardian terraces with Welsh slate and tall stacks near the seafront, 1930s semis under clay and concrete tiles in Goring and Durrington, hipped bungalows with flat-roofed extensions, flint cottages under the Downs and old stone-slab roofs out in the villages of the Weald.
07
Where we work around Worthing
We cover the Worthing neighbourhoods from Goring-by-Sea to Broadwater and High Salvington, then Lancing, Sompting and Shoreham-by-Sea along the Adur, east to Portslade, Hove and Brighton, and west to Ferring, Angmering, Littlehampton and Arundel. Inland we go to Findon, Steyning, Storrington and Henfield, and further out to Bognor Regis, Chichester, Horsham and Burgess Hill.
We come to you; there are no public premises. Ring 01903 299063, message us on WhatsApp or fill in the form, and tell us what you can see. You can also find us on Google.