Who is coming to look at your roof
Anyone who rings a roofer has the same question on their mind: what is wrong up there, and what will it take to put right? That is where we begin. You describe what you have noticed. It might be a brown patch above the bed, a tile lying on the drive, a gutter dragging away from the fascia board or a flat roof with a pond sitting on it after every shower. We tell you what that usually points to, what else it could be, and what we would need to see to be certain.
Then we come and look. Your roof is surveyed and photographed before any price is mentioned, and what we offer afterwards is set out on paper. You can read it at the kitchen table, show it to a neighbour or a relative, and take as long as you like. Nothing about how we work relies on a decision made on the doorstep.
The rest of this page covers who we are, where we work, how a job runs and how we judge when to mend a roof and when to renew it. It is written so that you can size us up before you ever pick up the phone.
A Swindon roofer for Swindon roofs
We are based in Swindon, so the buildings in and around the town are the ones we meet most often. They span a long stretch of history. Swindon’s Railway Village cottages are described in the council appraisal as having heavy-looking pitched slate roofs, and cottages like those need a very different hand from a house put up in the last few decades.
Each building period roofs differently, and each one fails differently too. A Victorian terrace often has lead valleys and chimney flashings that earlier owners have patched again and again. A late twentieth century estate house may have concrete interlocking tiles with a dry verge that has worked loose and underlay gone brittle at the eaves. A recent house can have a thin breathable membrane, tight ventilation gaps and ridge tiles held by dry-fix clips. Working out which of these you have, before a ladder goes up, saves a good deal of guesswork.
Swindon is a town and a borough, ringed by older settlements that have their own roofing habits. Highworth sits on its hill, Wroughton lies under the downs, and Purton and Cricklade lie to the north-west. Beyond the borough boundary the roofs change character again, and our method changes with them.
Every place within 30 road miles
We work across the town and every place within 30 road miles. In practice that takes in the Swindon districts and villages, Royal Wootton Bassett, Highworth, Wroughton, Purton and Cricklade, Marlborough and the North Wessex Downs, Cirencester and the Cotswold edge, Faringdon, Wantage and the Vale of White Horse, the West Berkshire towns along the M4, and Chippenham, Calne and Malmesbury.
The limit is measured by road, not as the crow flies, because the road is what decides how long it takes us to reach a house. Each town inside it has a page here covering its roof types, its council and the planning points that apply nearby. Start from areas we serve and find yours.
Some of those places carry extra rules. A conservation area, a listed building or a property inside a National Landscape such as the North Wessex Downs can face tighter control over what is altered and what materials are used. We raise those points at the survey instead of leaving you to hear them from the council later.
Homes, shops, farms and industrial units
The work covers residential and commercial roofs. For homes that means installation, replacement, repair, maintenance and emergency make-safes. For commercial customers it means flat and pitched roofs on shops, offices, industrial units, farm buildings and older properties in town centres.
- Repairs: slipped or cracked tiles, failed flashings, leaking valleys and worn ridge pointing. See roof repairs.
- Replacement: stripping and re-covering a roof that has gone beyond sensible repair. See roof replacement.
- Flat roofs: felt, EPDM (a synthetic rubber sheet) and GRP (glass-reinforced plastic, the material sold as fibreglass). See flat roofing.
- Lead and chimneys: flashings, valleys and stack repairs. See lead roofing and chimney repairs.
- Make-safes: a leaking or storm-battered roof is stopped from getting worse first, so the lasting repair can be planned with a clear head. See emergency roof repairs.
- Commercial: see commercial roofing.
Everything else sits on the services page. If your job fits no heading, ring and describe it. A sensible conversation costs nothing.
How a job runs with us
Each job follows the same four steps, whether it is one slipped tile or a complete strip and re-cover.
- You ask. Ring, drop us a WhatsApp or complete the form on the site. Say what you have noticed, where in the house it shows, and roughly when it began.
- We survey. We get up and inspect the roof itself, the loft or ceiling below it where we can reach, and the trail of water from the visible damage back to its source. Pictures are taken as we go.
- You receive the quote in writing. The survey pictures arrive with it, so you can see the fault yourself and match each part of the proposed work to something real. The price is a single total covering the work described.
- We do the work and tidy up. Afterwards we sweep the ground, load the debris and hand over the guarantee in writing.
Pictures matter because the pavement tells you little. A cracked tile and a failing batten look much alike from down there, and a damp patch indoors can trace back to a valley some distance along the slope. Showing you the image turns the conversation into one about your roof, not about our word.
Mend it when mending works, renew it when it does not
Neither repair nor replacement is our default. A repair is right where the fault is contained and the surrounding roof is sound. A replacement is right when the covering has run out of life, when the timbers beneath are failing, or when repair bills have begun to outrun what they save.
Our rule is to put forward the smallest job that fully cures the problem. If three tiles have slipped because their nails rusted, a repair around them may be everything the roof needs, and that is what you will be told. If the nails are going across the whole slope and tiles break as we lift them, a patch only delays the day, and you will hear that too.
A few things tip the decision one way or the other:
- How widespread the fault is across the slope, as opposed to where the drip lands indoors.
- The state of the battens and rafters, which we check wherever they can be reached.
- Whether the underlay under the covering is intact or has perished.
- What the covering is, and how its usual lifespan sits against its age.
- Whether planned work, such as a loft room or new roof windows, would make a re-cover sensible now.
The evidence behind a recommendation is always shown to you. If you want another view, take our pictures to anyone you choose.
The method follows the building
A roof is not something you order by the square metre. The right approach depends on what the building is. A railway terrace with natural slate wants slate laid with the right headlap and fixed with the right nails. A house from the 1980s wants a covering that suits its pitch and its battens. A cottage out towards the Cotswolds may want stone slates that diminish in size from eaves to ridge. An industrial unit wants a membrane or sheet system to suit its span, its falls and its access.
That is why the building comes before the brochure. Pitch decides which coverings are suitable, since each tile and slate type comes with a lowest pitch it should be laid at. Weight matters, since a heavier covering can need building control approval and a check on the roof structure. Exposure matters, because a ridge on open downland meets different conditions from one in a sheltered cul-de-sac.
On older buildings we also think about what ought to stay. Original slates, hand-made clay tiles and lead in sound condition are worth keeping where they can be kept, and worth matching like for like where they cannot.
Consent, Building Regulations and what we explain
Re-roofing is not usually a planning matter, but it can be a Building Regulations one. Whether a job is notifiable turns on how large a share of the roof and of the building envelope is affected, whether the new covering is significantly heavier, and whether the structure is altered. We talk you through where your job stands, and where it is notifiable we deal with the Building Regulations notification ourselves.
Listed buildings, conservation areas and Article 4 directions add more layers. Your local council decides those, not us, and the sensible first move is a call to the council’s planners before anything is ordered. We tell you what to ask. The roof Building Regulations guide has more.
None of this is meant to alarm you. It is simply part of doing the job properly, and it is far easier settled at the survey than discovered afterwards.
The guarantee and the finish
Our work carries a 10-year workmanship guarantee, in writing. It speaks for how the work was carried out, which is the part we control. Materials have their own manufacturer terms, and a guarantee is never a forecast of how long a roof will last. The detail is on the guarantee page.
Once the last tile is on, we clear the ground and the debris goes in our vehicle. Broken tiles, battens, old felt and offcuts are not left behind in your garden or on the street. If we have worked above a drive or patio, we look it over before we go.
Talk to us
The quickest route is to phone 01793 626096. You can also send a picture of the problem by WhatsApp, or complete the form at the foot of any page. Give us the area, what is visible and when it began, and we will share our thinking and book the survey.
If you are not ready for a visit yet, the costs page and the quote page may help first. Our details are on the contact page as well, and you can find us on Google if you would like to look us up there.