The low kitchen roof on a rendered Warrington house let water in whenever it rained hard. We stripped it, renewed the underlay, battens and leadwork, and re-covered it with new verge caps to the edge.
The call was about heavy rain. Everything was fine in ordinary weather, but when it came down hard and driven, water found its way into the kitchen at the back of this rendered Warrington house. Leaks that only show in a downpour almost always mean the tiles are letting water past and whatever should be catching it underneath is no longer doing so.
The kitchen sits in a low single-storey outshot at the rear, under a shallow pitch that runs up to the wall of the house. Small roofs like that get overlooked for years while the main roof gets all the attention, and they take a lot of punishment — run-off from above, a long wall abutment down one side, and a shallow angle that does not shed water as quickly as a steep slope. This one needed taking off rather than patching, which is how a good many of our Warrington repair jobs end up going.
The old covering was small plain tiles, dull with age and with debris and bits of growth sitting between them. They came off first, and what was underneath explained the leak straight away. The felt had worn through and torn, leaving stretches where there was effectively nothing between the tiles and the ceiling below, and the battens had darkened and softened after years of being wet.
The leadwork at the wall abutment was the other half of the problem. It had aged, gone rough at the edges and lost its seal where it turns into the render, which on a roof pitched into a wall is exactly where wind-driven rain is pushed hardest. Between the torn felt, the failing battens and the tired lead, heavy rain had three ways in.
Everything came off down to the rafters — tiles, the remains of the felt, and all the old battens — and was cleared away rather than left in the garden below. New breathable membrane then went on in lapped runs from the eaves upwards, so any water that does get past the covering is carried down and out over the gutter.
New treated battens went over the membrane, gauged so the courses came out square, and the new covering was laid up the slope from the bottom. New leadwork was formed in along the wall abutment and dressed down over the covering, and new verge caps finished the open edge so wind cannot get underneath and start lifting. The last photographs were taken at dusk with the roof wet again, which is as good a first test as any.
If a ceiling stains in a storm and then stays dry for weeks, it is tempting to leave it. The trouble is that each soaking keeps the battens and the roof timbers wet a little longer, so the roof degrades faster than the ceiling shows. By the time there is a steady drip, the felt has usually been gone for some time. We would rather look at one of these early, while it is still a repair.
There is more on what we take on over on the roof repairs page, and a comparable strip and recover on a kitchen ceiling leak in Sale. If something is coming in at your place when the weather turns, get in touch and we will come out, find where it is getting in and quote you for putting it right.
Tell us what the roof is doing and roughly where you are. We will come and look, and you get a written price before anything starts.
