Roofing in Solihull, priced in writing before anything starts.
Roofing in Solihull has one recurring feature that follows directly from how wooded the borough is: the trees are as much a factor as the covering.
Gutters here carry a leaf load that gutters in an open town simply do not. A blocked gutter on a tall house does not just overflow, it soaks the wall head and pushes water behind the fascia, and on a plot with mature planting that is an annual problem rather than an occasional one. Leaf guards, adequately sized outlets and a realistic maintenance expectation are worth designing in rather than retrofitting after the damage.
The coverings themselves divide the usual way. The older villa stock is clay tile or slate on cut timbers, with the failures concentrated at the bay roofs, porch roofs and abutments rather than in the main slope. The post-war housing is concrete tile on trussed rafters, where the verges and flashings are the weak points after seventy years.
The weight point applies when re-covering: a roof built for concrete tile will generally take slate, but a roof built for slate cannot always take concrete tile.
Re-covering triggers a Building Regulations requirement to look at insulation, and we arrange that inspection and see it through to sign off. In a conservation area the covering material is not a free choice. More on our roofing page.
Four things we commit to on every job, rather than four things we say about ourselves.
Permitted development is not an exemption from Building Regulations. We arrange the Solihull Metropolitan Borough Council inspections, meet the inspector on site at each stage and see the work through to sign off. We do not make the application itself, and we will tell you what is needed and when.
Free, and you get it before you commit to us. Party walls and skip licences are raised at quotation stage, not three weeks into the dig.
The same people do the groundworks, the brickwork and the fit out. Nobody hands your job to a subcontractor you have never met.
You get a straight answer rather than a padded price. It costs us a job occasionally and saves you a great deal more.
Process, specification and what moves the price are set out on our roofing page.
The answers that genuinely differ from one Solihull street to the next.
Scaffold on a Solihull plot usually stands on your own ground, which avoids a highway licence entirely. Where it has to go on the road the licence comes from Solihull Council as highway authority, arranged by the scaffold company.
Overhanging branches frequently have to be managed before scaffold can go up, and on a protected tree that is a notification to the council rather than a decision on site. We allow time for it rather than pruning first and explaining later.
We do not strip more roof in a day than we can make watertight again by the evening, even where the programme would prefer otherwise.
There is a consequence of that direction people rarely anticipate. Solar panels are normally permitted development, and where a direction removes permitted development rights for most householder work, that route may no longer be available. If panels are part of your plan for a property in the affected area, check before commissioning a survey.
Part of our wider building work in Solihull.
Send photographs and a rough brief, or call and talk it through. We will tell you if a job is not right for us.
Southfield Construction (Rugby) Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company 14209138.
