repairing roof or new roof

[Annpan]

OH and I have been sitting here all night trying to get our heads around this.

We have a serious damp problem (requiring £10000 worth of work) We also have new leaks springing in our roof every time it rains. We were hoping for a long hot summer to figure out what needs done but we now have a date of 20th of this month and the front of the roof needs to come off to get at the dry-rot and have it treated.

Basically, we need some type of re-roofing... we can
1. Have the slate removed, sarking repaired, felt put down and slate put back on.
2. Have the slate removed and felt, battens and concrete tiles put down.
3. Put our fingers in our ears and sing la, la, la, la, la, until the house crumbles around us and we are homeless...

This work is on top of the cost of the damp treatments and although it is desperatley needed I am trying to think of a way around it. It is alot of money and, since E was born we only have 1 income. We don't want to cut corners and end up regreting it, we are just trying to figure out the most sensible option.

Adding to that is that we plan to have the back of the house demolished and a new 1 1/2 story extension put on so we are trying to avoid spending anything on that part of the house just now.

There are somethings that trying to be self-sufficientish just can't help you with.

Any suggestions or advice from anyone who has been through something similar??

And to add, please don't put me on a guilt trip about the waste of a new roof, this is hard enough as it is and financial affordability and a dry home for my family are the priorities.

[Martin]

unfortunately, a stopgap cheap bodge often ends up being more expensive in the end - I'd go for reusing the original slates! One of the worst bodges we come across are the foam sprays used on the underside of the tiles - it takes no account of the need to expand and contract with heating and cooling, and you'll end up needing the whole lot replaced!

[mybarnconversion]

A tricky one ... one thing I'd be sure about would be retaining slate & NOT going down the concrete tiles route ... in my opinion they're ugly, nasty and have poor green credentials (especially in relation to recycled slate).

[Muddypause]

I had to look up why you refered to sarking and felt. Seems Scotland have their own peculiarities, and sark with timber and then put felt over it. Here, sarking tends to mean the felt itself, and no boarding is used.

Replacing slates with concrete tiles usually requires strengthening the roof - concrete tiles can be significantly heavier than slate, and you can sometimes see roofs badly bowing as a result of doing this without reinforcing the timbers somehow. Ultimately, the roof may collapse and do other structural damage, too. If you are forced into this route, make sure you know exactly what is involved.

But if the existing slates are reusable, this would seem to make the most economic sense, though you will probably have to replace some of them.

Anyhow, who's doing the work? You will save a stack of money if you do it yourself. There really is not much mystery to this aspect of re-roofing. The supporting timbers are already there, so you don't need to work out how the loads are carried. Providing you can use a hammer and a tape measure, and have a little nouse about you, putting the top on is fairly easy. Get some scoffolding put up, though.

As a temporary measure, you could, for example use corrugated iron sheets. For preference, board the roof first and fix the iron over it. Or, come to think of it, as long as it's temporary, you can get bitumen corrugated roofing - really intended for garages, etc.

Or, keeping it really simple, just put a couple of layers of felt down over the boards, using adhesive (preferably the hot-melt stuff, though this may be a challenge on a slope; cold goo that you apply with a trowel is also available), and tack the edges so it stays there while it's unprotected. Done well, this will keep you watertight in the short term, and give you a bit of breathing space while you get some money together to finish the job. And the battens and slates can just go straight on top. If you are pulling the other half of the building down later, you may have a supply of more slates to use.

[Thurston Garden]

There is no option really. As a slater who was taught by my Dad who has slated now for 50 years, you need to strip off slates and sarking (called serking here) get the rot treated, re-sark and cover with one of the new breathable membranes (which have replaced underslating felt) and you have a watertight building for 3 months. Light degrads these membranes after 3 months, so you have a little time in which to reslate.

I would, from experience recommend that you do not tackle this job yourself. You need an old school slater, be careful of recently time served ones.....

Slating is a definite skill. I did it for 6 years (5 of those were my apprenticeship). Nailing slates on the middle of the roof is reasonably straight forward, but eaves, verges, ridges, windows and flashings (most particularly lead) are highly skilled.

I often shake my head when I see new developments which have been slated with, most of the time, new slates. Younger slaters never dress their slates which leaves a very unsightly and amateur looking roof.

On stripping the slates (and there's a technique to doing this if you want to reuse them!) they need to be carefully stacked and then dressed - graded into at least 3 thicknesses, (I have often seen my Dad grade to 5 thicknesses), re-square badly dressed ones, rehole them and use th cuttings to make narrow slates (in a multitude of widths for when the slating is either forward or back, toppers for the ridges and undereasings (which go on upside down for the eaves). Depending on the number of slates, this could take a few days..... Only then can you think about reslating...

In my mind, anything short of this is a bodge. A well slated roof will last in excess of 100 years, and even then, it's only the galvanised nails that give up.

Last summer Dad and I (me after 15 years of doing any roofing...) redid a friend's roof. We did all the roofing (Pan Tiles as it is in a Conservation area), including slating the fronts and sides of 3 dormer windows on the rear. my friend in his wisdom (and in an effort to save money) felted the flat roofs of his dormers with that horrible self adhesive felt, and, wait for it..... a hairdryer!! His 3 dormers leaked 3 months after moving into his refurbished house. if only he had listened.

He thought watching my Dad do the lead flashings mad it look easy, so he insisted on doing the lead underneath the window cills himself - needless to say it is a complete hash and leaking already. His new windows will have rotten cills in a couple of years. If my friend tries to sell his house, he is going to have great difficulty - the purchasers surveyor is going to have a field day, and he is going to have to drop his valuation price significantly...

The roof is the most important part of the house. Don't take any shortcuts.

[Thurston Garden]

I had to look up why you refered to sarking and felt. Seems Scotland have their own peculiarities, and sark with timber and then put felt over it. Here, sarking tends to mean the felt itself, and no boarding is used.

In Scotland, rough sawn boards, 6" wide and something between 3/8 and 5/8ths of an inch thick are nailed onto the rafters. Historically, slates would have been fixed directly onto this, but bitumen underslating felt was used in the last 40 or so years. Breathable membrane is now used in place of felt (both sides of th border I imagine).

Even on a tile roof, sarking is put down with thin counter battens nailed vertically directly on top of the rafters and then tile battens horizontally at the appropriate spacings.

I am not exactly sure why sarking is used here, but it does add substantial structure to the roof. No houses of cards here hehe.

[Annpan]

TG - you refer to the breathable membrane, although our architect has told us we must use it (as we have no roof vents and we have rooms in the void so space for insulation is minimal) I am just informing you that the 2 quotes which we have state the use of F1 underlaying felt and not a VPU. so it is not universally used.

The re-using of the original welsh slate looks nigh on impossible, although we should be able to use it for roofing outhouses, so it will be re-cycled, the slates are just to small and numerous to justify the time taken to strip, stack and re-square them (for a smaller, less immediate job, we plan on learning a bit about it, as I say, on outhouse, shed, etc)

At the moment we have no intention of doing any of the roofing work ourselves, we have no experience of roofs and a small baby in the house, with no family nearby, so it is a no go. We would take it on ourselves to do any repairs to the roof in the future though (slipped slates, etc) We are not interested in any of those 'miricle foam' products, I have learned from experience that the time you spend preparing and doing a job correctly is worth 100 of these hair-brain DIY tubes of chemicals.

So currently, our long dilleberations through the night seemed to come out at having the front of the house re-roofed with new spanish slate, and the back of the house repaired where essential. This is in the hope that we will eventually realise our plans to re-build the back of the house.

Finding suitable slaters isn't as easy as we thought, it is hard enough just to get them to return your calls, then you get the old..... 'ooh, it'll cost you' nonsence. Sometimes I wish that we could do all the work ourselves.

[Martin]

there is another alternative for slate - there are Chinese ones available which are considerably cheaper (I'll leave you to wrestle with your conscience on the greenness of such a move) - they are very similar to the "native" slates, and often have a slightly greenish tinge

[Thurston Garden]

Who felt that the existing slates are not reusable? You can really on tell this when you start stripping them off, unless the roof is totally knackred Any idea what size the existing slates are? 13" by 7"s are probably the most common size although 14" by 8"s are often used too (5.5" and 6" showing on each course respectively).

Second hand welsh 13 * 7's are about 50/60p each. Buying new does not negate the requirement to dress them (despite what any other slaters will say - they just cannot be bothered doing it!). Have a look at a new build that has been slated - if the slates are very dark in colour and all higgledy piggledy, then odds on they are Spanish or Chinese and have not been dressed properly. They will rattle in the wind and look awful IMHO. Compare that with an old house where the slating is graded thick ons at the bottom getting thinner as you go up - they lie, as my Dad would say, "Like a Bride"

I would be interested in knowing the price of a new Spanish slate - we always avoided using them in favour of second hand welsh, and on odd occasions Scotch slates.

[Annpan]

TG I have just leaned out my window to measure the slates they ar 5" wide with 3.5" of each course showing (I hope that makes sense)

I was not told by anyone that the slate could not be reused, I had guessed so myself and when I asked the roofers they said to renew the slate (I know, they would, more money I guess) I have not been give a price for the slate... just a whole job price.

Just out of interest where does your dad work?

[Thurston Garden]

That makes them 9" by 5" (twice the distance showing plus 2") which is unusually small. Buying second hand ones that size might not be easy - especially to get a decent colour match. So second hand Welsh might well be a better option - the wee ones could be saved for something fancy like a summerhouse!

My Dad is retired now, just, and I pulled him out of retirement last year because it was my mates roof!

I suspect the quote you have been given is then for new Spanish slates nailed on as they come right out of the packing crate.

[Muddypause]

Generally, the smaller the slate, the more they cost per square meter, as well as taking longer to fit, which adds even more to cost. So if using larger slates is an option, this may help the economics. Traditionally, slate sizes have charming names like Duchess and Countess - the smaller the slate, the more minor the dignitary it was named after, so yours is probably something like a Village Mayor, or Chairman of the WI.

Would you consider artificial slate? Cheaper than Welsh slate (but don't know about Spanish or Chinese, etc.), and generally quicker, easier and cheaper to fit. You can get artificial slate that actually looks a bit like real, weathered slate, these days. But, of course, not a 'natural' product.

[Annpan]

Yup, basically I really don't mind at the moment, getting our home warm and dry in time for winter is our priority, after that we can piss about playing at living the good life but right now don't really care ( )

This is going to cost us alot more money than we have, we are going to have to take out further loans and maybe then being self-sufficientish will have to come back into the equation

I did actually see some recycled plastic roofing tiles, but I don't know if they are instead of tile (ie on battens) or instead of slate (straight on sarking) It is quite difficult to get hold of strange products and trying to find a tradesman who is willing to do it for you is pretty tough.

It seems that if we go for tiles (including battens) it raises the roof to an extent that we we will need to put in special hidden guttering at either side (we are terraced) which will add to the cost. But if we go for slate, as you say TG we may get inferior workmanship... something in roofing that we know nothing about. Should I ask the roofer if he will dress the tiles before putting them up and the stand watching over him, or is this just going to be a gamble I will have to take?

As for your Dad TG, It was worth asking eh

[Thurston Garden]

I would only go for second hand welsh - in either 13 by 7s or 14 by 8s. Going for an unusual slate or tile makes future repairs more awkward and costly - what happens if a chimney blows down an shatters a large area....

As far as dressing, I would drop it into any conversation. it rally does make a difference to the job. It may take a day or two depending on how many slates there are (and it should be done on site) and this it one half of the tool which they use. I had to have a left handed one made by our blacksmith when I started my apprenticeship!

[Thurston Garden]

How's your slater getting on?