PROJECT

Industrial Roof Refurbishment at the Flambeau Factory, Ramsgate

How we refurbished the valley roofs at the Flambeau factory in Ramsgate — clearing moss-choked valleys, sealing cracked sheeting and restoring drainage.

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At-a-glance

Location: Ramsgate, Kent

Property Type: Industrial factory

Service: Commercial roof refurbishment

Year: 2026

Duration:

Materials: Sealants and replacement fixings

The brief

Flambeau's Ramsgate facility is a substantial industrial building with a huge footprint — long, pitched valley roofs running the length of the site. Roofs on that scale don't fail dramatically. They degrade quietly, year after year, until one heavy downpour finds every weak point at once.

By the time we were called in, the valleys had become genuinely overgrown and the drainage was no longer doing its job. The concern was straightforward: this was a working production facility, and water getting inside a building like that is not a decorating problem. It's a stock, plant and downtime problem.

What was needed was a full refurbishment of the valley roofs and drainage — carried out without shutting the factory down.

The challenge

Three things made this more than a straightforward clean-up.

Vegetation had taken hold. These weren't valleys with a bit of moss in them. Thick moss, weeds and years of accumulated silt and organic debris had built up along the valley lines. Vegetation on a roof is not merely untidy — it holds water permanently against the sheeting and the fixings, which is exactly how corrosion and cracking start.

The drainage had stopped working. With the outlets and internal drainage blocked or overgrown, water had nowhere to go. Standing water on an industrial roof adds weight, works its way into every crack and fixing hole, and turns a minor defect into a leak the first time it rains hard.

The building couldn't stop. This is the part that separates commercial roofing from domestic work. A factory has production schedules, staff and vehicle movements below, and no appetite for a roofing crew getting in the way. Everything had to be sequenced around the site's operations, with access equipment positioned and moved so it never became a problem for anyone working underneath.

On top of that, work at height on a large industrial roof carries obvious risk, so this ran under strict health and safety protocols throughout, using mobile access equipment rather than improvised access.

What we did

Cleared the central roof valleys completely — moss, weeds, silt and organic debris stripped out along the full valley lines, back to sound sheeting.
Assessed the sheeting underneath. Once the vegetation was off, we could finally see the condition of the roof itself. Cracks and failed fixings that had been buried under years of growth were identified and recorded.
Repaired the visible cracks and failed fixings using appropriate sealants and replacement fasteners — sealing the vulnerable points before the next heavy rainfall could find them.
Checked and flushed every internal drainage run and outlet point, so the water leaving the valleys actually had somewhere to go. Clearing a valley without clearing what it drains into just moves the problem along.
Worked under strict health and safety protocols throughout, using mobile access equipment, and sequenced the work to keep disruption to factory operations to a minimum.

The result

The valleys are clean and the water paths are open, which means the roof drains the way it was designed to rather than holding water across its length. The standing water and moss build-up are gone, and the cracks and failed fixings that had been hidden underneath are sealed.

Just as importantly, the factory kept running. The work was completed with minimal disruption to operations — which on a commercial job is usually the thing the client remembers longest.

A roof this size is never a one-and-done. But it's now in a condition where routine maintenance will keep it there, rather than one wet week away from a serious problem.