Roofs are an important part of the appearance of the house, so they must be maintained in keeping with the original plan.

Please talk to the committee and submit your plans well in advance. It is very important to get this right, and we have access to experience that will help.

Main roof

The main pitched roof was originally fitted with asbestos composition ‘slates’. At 50 years old these are going soft and breaking up. The slates are classed as ‘low risk asbestos products’ so they must be handled with care and disposed of correctly, but the work can be done by suitably-trained roofers – it does not need an asbestos specialist.

A suitable replacement slate is the Marley Eternit Thrutone fibre slate in blue-black. There is a sample in the garden shed.

The valley was originally lined with lead and in some cases this was done badly (in a single length which split when the temperature changed). Take advice from your roofer on this: mostly people are choosing to use new lead, but if you choose a different material please make sure that it will look the same.

The main gutters are rectangular section metal. This is important: please do not use plastic gutters or other shapes. The downpipe should be a single length of straight pipe painted to match the ‘putty colour’ of the woodwork. See Gutters and Downpipes for more information.

Roofs are edged with aluminium trim at the top. Please try to re-use the original where you can, or replace it with trim of the same appearance.

We have developed some detailed specifications for roof replacements. These can be downloaded from the Roofing page.

Flat roof above the front door

The flat roof above the entrance hall and cloakroom is finished in green mineral with aluminium trim. There may be stone chippings as well.

Bin-store / utility room roof

The bin store was originally open to the sky, so any roof installed here should not be visible from outside the house. Several houses have very successful roofs installed within the walls, with an internal gutter and downpipe. One or two installed a plastic sheet right across the top: although this is easy to do it does not look right and we do not want any more of these.

General

Aluminium trim can be supplied by Paptrim: http://paptrim.co.uk/Products/Aluminium-Felt-Trim

A lot of heat gets lost through roofs so if replacing a major part of the roof then you should add insulation using solid insulation boards. You will need to put a vapour-barrier across the inside of the loft space above the small bedroom. It will be difficult to seal this properly to the walls, but it is very important to get it right to avoid condensation in the roof structure.

Major work on roofs will require a Building Control application and inspection.