• Hi all and welcome to TheWoodHaven2 brought into the 21st Century, kicking and screaming! We all have Alasdair to thank for the vast bulk of the heavy lifting to get us here, no more so than me because he's taken away a huge burden of responsibility from my shoulders and brought us to this new shiny home, with all your previous content (hopefully) still intact! Please peruse and feed back. There is still plenty to do, like changing the colour scheme, adding the banner graphic, tweaking the odd setting here and there so I have added a new thread in the 'Technical Issues, Bugs and Feature Requests' forum for you to add any issues you find, any missing settings or just anything you'd like to see added/removed from the feature set that Xenforo offers. We will get to everything over the coming weeks so please be patient, but add anything at all to the thread I mention above and we promise to get to them over the next few days/weeks/months. In the meantime, please enjoy!

New roof.

M

MY63

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We live in a 1930's semi and our roof is looking its age. The last time our roofer did repairs he said the tiles were brittle and we should be thinking about replacing the roof in the next 5 years.
As he was planning on retiring I tended to believe what he said.
The existing roof is rosemary tiles and they look great but I understand they are expensive. My sister lives next door and is considering having her side done at the same time, So at least if we went with a different tile it would not look as bad as some of our neighbours. Some have used tiles that look twice as thick as rosemary's and they look terrible, almost as bad as the ones who have used black tiles.
Any advice appreciated.
 
When we bought our house, the surveyor said that the whole roof would need replacing soon. That was 32 years ago. Over that time we have replaced about a quarter of the roof tiles and battens, but none of the underlying woodwork. We also replace the occasional slipped tile as soon as we notice it. I expect the roof will still be keeping the rain out long after I am gone.
Unless you are already seeing wholesale failure of the tiles, I would leave well alone.
 
I know of the Rosemary plain tile. It's clay. Is that the one?

My personal view on this is that too many rooves are replaced too soon. If there aren't multiple breakages and/ or tiles dropping off willy nilly, I'd leave it. Clay plain tiles 400 years old can still make a perfectly good roof.
 
As far as I know they are rosemary clay tiles.
The old roofer told me every time he replaced a tile he was replacing the two either side of it as they were breaking.
I have the name of a trusted roofer so I am going to give him a call and see what he says.

2019-03-26_03-08-37 by my0771, on Flickr

Picture might help
 
Our house was built in 1947 just after the war and there seemed to be a distinct shortage of cement at the time as there was nothing :o between the ridge tiles on the roof except fresh air! The back South facing wall had also been scoured by wind and was badly in need of re-pointing, so we had both done by a reputable local firm a couple of years ago.
We also had one of the chimney's taken out (as it was wonky) and the other one re-pointed at the same time. The roofer mentioned that the;

IMG_0644.jpg

...lower roof (over the water butt) had been leaking for the last 80 odd years as there was no lead flashing; the builders had used a fillet of cement to try and make it watertight. As a consequence, the timbers underneath were rotten and had to be replaced; that section of the roof had dropped by around 30mm!
It was an expensive little exercise to get done and we had to wait a year for the roofing company to do it but it was ultimately very well worthwhile - Rob
 
TrimTheKing":v37mjigy said:
Not all ridges need pointing Rob, might be worth checking you weren’t ripped off...
Click to expand...
Most of houses in the road that had original roofs have still got their pointing in the ridges; ours was the only one that didn't, so it needed to be done. If you read about all the other ailments that needed sorting out, we certainly weren't 'ripped off' and we consider for the excellent job done, it was rather good value for money - Rob
 
Woodbloke":19d2dn8k said:
Most of houses in the road that had original roofs have still got their pointing in the ridges; ours was the only one that didn't, so it needed to be done. If you read about all the other ailments that needed sorting out, we certainly weren't 'ripped off' and we consider for the excellent job done, it was rather good value for money - Rob
Click to expand...

I lived in a house built after the war in a road full of council houses. The builder built the whole road. Mine, one of a pair of semis, was private at the time of build, and was nowhere near the the standard of construction of the rest of the council houses. E.g. you could rub the mortar away with your finger, but not on all the other houses. So the builder got his bunch by throwing up the two private houses after building the council houses to the required standard.
 
Malc2098":lkr0lqck said:
The builder built the whole road. Mine, one of a pair of semis, was private at the time of build, and was nowhere near the the standard of construction of the rest of the council houses.
Click to expand...
This one's an ex-council property and apparently the estate was built to house the Earl of Pembroke's workers, who's stately gaff is just down the road in Wilton. Apart from the weak mortar mix in the south wall and the cement rendering on roof instead of proper lead flashing, it's built like the proverbial 'out' house :lol: so much so that you very rarely see them up for sale - Rob
 
We have had some local roofers give opinions both said exactly the same the rosemary tiles are reaching the end of their life.
By the time we have put up scaffolding and started to replace the damaged tiles they estimate for every 10 tiles they replace another 5 will break in the process.
I have limited funds and cannot take the risk of having to repeat the process in 5 or ten years time so we have decided to go with the concrete double roman tiles our neighbours have used.
We chose the roofer not by price but by the fact he came when he said he would and dropped off samples when he said he would, and has done work locally.
The other guys did not come when they said they would, never dropped of the samples they promised and were a week late in providing an estimate.
 
I thought I would give an update on the roof.
Scaffolding went up last Wednesday as planned skips arrived Thursday the roofers were delayed by the weather until Friday, However they decided not to start until Monday due to the weekend forecast.
Peter the owner of the business told me he did not want to leave the roof open over the weekend.
So work started on Monday the front of the roof and one side came off and were felted and battened in one day.

2020-08-26_07-29-46 by my0771, on Flickr

Tuesday was a rightoff due to weather Wednesday saw tiles on the front and side other side stripped felted and battened. Thursady side tiled back stripped, felted battened and tiled.

2020-08-27_09-48-25 by my0771, on Flickr

I had planned on taking lots of pictures but circumstances did not allow this.
We have been amazed at how fast they have worked all by hand,normally they would hire a machine to lift the tiles onto the roof, especially for a double job like this but there are none to be had. No nail guns when I asked they said they slow them down, 5 guys with hammers 1 supplying the battens they just worked up the roof nailing as they went.
There is a lot of sea gull activity in our area so we are having a cage fitted to our chimney tomorrow the ridge tiles are dry fit and they go on tomorrow.
we also had to wait three weeks for tiles our first choice were out of stock until next year.
Peter tells me he is fully booked for the rest of the year and is now booking work for 2021.
 
All in it actually took 3.5 days to strip and replace both rooves.

2020-09-02_03-34-18 by my0771, on Flickr

The large cage was custom made to fit, I wish I could share the video of my neighbour being attacked by a huge seagull that was nesting on his neighbours roof, they had a few weeks where they could not go into their garden.
 
It'll look great in 5 years time when the newness has worn off, and there's a bit of lichen appearing. I've not seen a cage like that over the chimney before.
 
MY63":2r1373ai said:
I wish I could share the video of my neighbour being attacked by a huge seagull that was nesting on his neighbours roof, they had a few weeks where they could not go into their garden.
Click to expand...

Upload your video to youtube - fairly painless process and then you can give us all a laugh by posting the link back here.
Open youtube as if you were about to watch a video, click on the Camera+ icon top right and select upload video.

Bob
 
Thanks Bob it was on his Instagram account I will ask him to send me it, I must admit I did laugh but as he has young children it was actually quite serious.
MikeG we live close to the coast and seagulls come inland to nest, I am not sure why they avoided our chimney, we has jackdaws nesting on ours. They had left before the roofers started.
 
MY63":2tkr1eql said:
......seagulls come inland to nest, I am not sure why they avoided our chimney, we has jackdaws nesting on ours. ..........
Click to expand...

I think you answered your own question! :) Jackdaw vs gull.........I'm backing the jackdaw.
 
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