A Full Re-Roof in Botany, Broadstairs

The challenge

Where flat meets pitched is where roofs leak. A dormer creates exactly that junction — a flat roof running into a tiled slope, with cheeks either side and lead detailing all the way round. It is comfortably the most demanding part of a roof like this, and it's where a rushed job shows up first, usually two winters later.

A roof window adds another opening. Cutting a hole in a freshly re-covered slope means the flashing kit has to be right for the tile going on and the tiles have to be dressed in around it properly. Done well you'd never know it hadn't always been there. Done badly it becomes the thing you're calling somebody back about.

The house had to stay watertight throughout. This is a lived-in home, not a building site. We don't open a whole roof up and hope the forecast holds.

What we did

• Stripped the old covering completely — tiles, battens and perished felt off, back to the structure.
• Inspected the timbers with everything exposed. This is the only chance you get to see the rafters properly, and it's the point at which any rot or movement has to be dealt with.
• Fitted Cromar VENT3 Classic breathable underlay — a BBA-certified membrane that keeps weather out while letting moisture escape from the roof space, rather than trapping it against the timber the way old bitumen felt does.
• Laid new tiles in neat courses across the roof, then bedded the ridge tiles to a clean finish.
• Rebuilt the dormer in fresh timber and covered it with a flat-roof finish.
• Formed the lead detailing at the junction between the dormer and the pitched roof — the critical joint on the whole job.
• Fitted the new roof window with its flashing kit and dressed the tiles in around it, completed a few days after the main covering went on.

The result

A crisp new roof, and a home underneath it that's protected for decades.

The parts we'd point to aren't the ones you notice from the pavement. It's the membrane that lets the roof space breathe, the lead at the dormer junction that will still be watertight in thirty years, and the window that sits in the slope as though it was always meant to be there.

Standing back at the end of a job like this, under a clear Thanet sky, is the best part of the week.

Related

• Roofers in Broadstairs
• Re-roofing across Thanet & East Kent
• VELUX & roof window installation
• The original write-up on our blog