Roof repairs in Macclesfield
Most roof problems are small, local and cheap to put right — provided somebody looks at them before the water has been getting in for two winters. A single slipped slate is an hour's work. The same slate left alone soaks a batten, rots it, and takes three more slates down with it when the nail lets go.
The commonest fault on an old roof is not the covering at all. It is nail sickness: the iron nails holding the slates corrode away, the slates start to slide one at a time, and no amount of individual repairs stops it because the fixings are failing everywhere at once. Knowing the difference between one slipped slate and a roof that has begun to shed matters, because the honest answer in the second case is that patching is throwing money away.
A repair should come with a reason. If your roofer cannot tell you what failed and why, they are guessing — and a guess on a roof means somebody comes back in six months. Expect to be shown a photograph of the actual defect, not a general warning about the state of things up there.
This is also where the doorstep trade does its damage. Nobody reputable knocks on your door because they were passing and noticed your tiles. If you did not ask them to come, do not let them on the roof.
Roof repairs — 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.
Slipped slates
A single slipped slate is a small job — refixed properly with a copper or lead tingle, or the surrounding slates lifted and it re-nailed. Several slipping at once from different parts of the roof is a different conversation, because that is usually the fixings failing rather than the slates.
Read more →Cracked & broken tiles
Individual tiles get swapped out and refixed to match. The job is straightforward on most tiled roofs; the parts that need care are matching a discontinued profile and making sure whatever broke the tile — foot traffic, frost, a failed fixing — is not going to break the next one.
Read more →Nail sickness
Nail sickness is the corrosion of the original iron nails holding a slate roof on, and it is why an old roof starts losing slates from everywhere at once. It cannot be patched out of, because every remaining fixing is the same age and in the same condition — so the honest answer is usually a strip and re-lay.
Read more →Rotten roof battens
Battens are the timber the slates and tiles are actually nailed to, and when they soften the covering has nothing to hold. They fail from long-term damp — a leak left alone, condensation in an unventilated loft, or simply age in a roof laid before treated timber was standard.
Read more →Rafter & roof timber repair
Where a leak has run long enough to reach the structure, the rotted rafter ends or purlin sections get cut out and spliced or sistered with new treated timber. A visibly sagging or dipped roof is structural and gets looked at properly before anything is re-covered over the top of it.
Read more →Porch, lean-to & bay roofs
Small roofs leak out of proportion to their size, because almost all of them is junction — an abutment against the house wall, an awkward flashing and often a pitch too shallow for the covering somebody put on it. Repairs here are mostly leadwork and getting the detail right.
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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