Roofing in Warwick, priced in writing before anything starts.
Warwick’s roofscape is one of the more visible results of the 1694 rebuild, and the council treats it that way.
The historic core is largely clay plain tile and slate on cut timbers, on buildings packed tightly together. That produces a great many valleys, abutments and junctions between one roof and its neighbour, and those junctions are where water gets in. A valley that has been patched for twenty years will keep failing at the same point until the lead is renewed properly. Sealant postpones the conversation rather than ending it.
Covering material is not a free choice here. In the conservation area it is controlled, and on a listed building the covering is part of what is listed, so like for like replacement is generally the expectation rather than an upgrade to something cheaper.
The later housing is concrete tile on trussed rafters and much simpler. The weight point still applies: a roof built for concrete tile will generally take slate, but a roof built for slate cannot always take concrete tile, and on a three hundred year old structure that margin is not theoretical.
Re-covering triggers a Building Regulations requirement to look at insulation, which in a historic roof needs designing rather than stuffing, because the wrong build up will trap moisture in the timbers. We arrange that inspection and see it through to sign off. 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 Warwick District 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 Warwick street to the next.
Scaffold on a Warwick frontage almost always stands on the footway or the carriageway, which is a highway licence from Warwickshire County Council arranged by the scaffold company and needed before the tower goes up. On the narrow central streets the position takes negotiating rather than assuming.
We do not strip more roof in a day than we can make watertight by the evening. On a historic roof with no felt under the covering that discipline is not optional, because there is nothing behind the tiles to hold the weather out.
Lead work on a historic roof has proper detailing rules, and they exist because lead moves. Bays that are too long, codes that are too thin and joints that are soldered where they should be welted all fail within a few years, and on a listed building the repair then costs more than doing it correctly would have. We work to the sizes that suit the metal rather than the ones that suit the day.
Part of our wider building work in Warwick.
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.
