Flat roofing & flat roof repairs in Macclesfield

Flat roofs got their bad name honestly. The three-layer bitumen felt fitted across the country in the 1960s and 70s had a working life of ten to fifteen years, blistered in the sun, cracked in the frost, and was routinely laid to no fall at all — so it ponded, and ponding is what finishes a flat roof off.

What is fitted today is a different product. EPDM rubber goes down as a single sheet with no joints across the field of the roof and is generally warranted for twenty years or more with a realistic service life well beyond that. GRP fibreglass cures into one seamless laminate and suits complicated shapes and upstands. Single-ply membranes are hot-air welded and are what most commercial flat roofs use. Torch-on felt is still specified, and modern high-performance systems are a long way from the stuff that failed in 1978.

The choice between them is decided by the deck, the falls, the detailing at the abutments and what sits on the roof, not by preference. A roof somebody walks on wants a different build-up to one nobody ever sees. A roof with a door onto it has threshold heights to respect.

Falls are the thing to ask about. A flat roof is not flat: it should be laid to a finished fall of at least 1:80, and because timber and screeds are never perfect, the industry designs to 1:40 to actually achieve it. If a quote does not mention falls or a tapered scheme on a roof that currently ponds, it is quoting to re-cover the problem rather than fix it.