Pitched roofing — tile & slate in Macclesfield
A pitched roof is a system, and the covering is only the visible part of it. Underneath sit the battens, the underlay, the fixings and the ventilation path, and it is normally one of those that has failed rather than the slate you can see out of the bedroom window.
The coverings round here fall into three eras and they behave very differently. The silk-era terraces are Welsh slate, thin, light and good for a century or more if the nails hold. The interwar and postwar estates are mostly clay or concrete plain tiles. The 1960s and 70s housing is concrete interlocking tile, which was sold as a sixty-year product and is now, quietly, sixty years old — and it is usually the fixings and the battens that go first while the tiles themselves still look serviceable from the pavement.
That mix is unusually wide in this town. VOA council tax data puts central Macclesfield at 54.1% pre-1919 while Tytherington is 1.5% — so two roofs a mile and a half apart can want completely different work, and a quote written from a photograph of the street is not worth much.
Whatever the covering, the current standard applies. BS 5534 was revised in 2014 and mortar alone is no longer an acceptable fixing for ridges, hips or verges — all of them have to be mechanically fixed. On the high ground east of the town that is not a technicality, it is the reason your ridge is still on the roof after a February gale.
Pitched, tiled & slate roofs — every job, in detail.
6 jobs in this category. Each has its own page explaining what's involved, what your roofer checks and — just as importantly — when a job can safely wait.
Natural slate roofs
Natural slate is the covering on most of Macclesfield's older housing, and properly laid it outlives almost everything else on the building. Work on it means matching the slate, respecting the headlap for the pitch, and fixing it in a way that will not corrode away again in eighty years.
Read more →Clay tile roofs
Clay tiles are the traditional alternative to slate and they age extremely well — a good clay plain tile roof will run comfortably past sixty years and often much more. The work is in matching a weathered tile, keeping the pitch right, and dealing with the frost damage that catches out cheaper tiles.
Read more →Concrete tile roofs
Concrete interlocking tile is what most of Macclesfield's postwar housing is covered in, and a great deal of it is now at the end of the sixty-year design life it was sold with. The tiles usually outlast their fixings, so the honest measure of the roof is the battens and nails, not how it looks from the street.
Read more →Stone slate & flag roofs
Stone slate is the older local vernacular on the hill villages — heavy, graded in diminishing courses up the slope, and needing a structure built for the weight. Repairs mean matching the stone, respecting the coursing, and never quietly swapping it for something lighter.
Read more →Roof underlay & membrane
The underlay is the secondary barrier beneath the slates or tiles, and on most older local roofs it is a bitumen felt that has gone brittle and torn. It can only be replaced with the covering off — so it is a re-roof component rather than a standalone job, and choosing breathable over felt is one of the real gains when that happens.
Read more →Roof ventilation
A roof space needs air moving through it or the moisture from the house condenses on the underside of the covering. Ventilation is cheap, quick and fixes the great majority of damp lofts — which are routinely and expensively misdiagnosed as leaking roofs.
Read more →Not sure which one you need?
Describe it in your own words on the quote form. Your roofer will work out what the job actually is when they ring you back — usually the same day.
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