Trusted Roofer In Kent

Kent covers everything from the east-facing chalk cliffs at Dover and Kingsdown through the North Downs and the Darent and Stour valleys to the Wealden farmland around Tunbridge Wells and the Ashford lowlands. Coastal areas see salt-laden air, easterly winter blows off the North Sea and south-westerly Channel gales. North Downs villages see wind exposure and harder frost than the coast. Wealden inland areas see wet winters, heavy clay soils, autumn leaf fall and storm-fallen branches. Roof specifications need to follow each location’s exposure.

Yes. Kent has hundreds of conservation areas spread across its 12 district and borough councils, including Dover, Canterbury, Thanet, Folkestone and Hythe, Ashford, Maidstone, Tonbridge and Malling, Tunbridge Wells, Sevenoaks, Dartford, Gravesham and Swale. Many also fall within the Kent Downs and High Weald National Landscapes. Listed building consent and planning consent are the homeowner’s responsibility and depend on the relevant district council and, where applicable, the National Landscape authority. We recommend checking with the right local council before any roof work begins, and we will work to whatever specification they approve.

Kent housing stock varies sharply by area. Coastal towns (Dover, Kingsdown, Folkestone) have Victorian terraces and post-war reconstruction with natural-slate or clay-tile roofs. North Downs villages (Otford, Eynsford, Farningham) have Kent ragstone, flint and timber-framed cottages with clay tile or peg tile. The Weald (Pluckley, Charing, Hever, Boughton Monchelsea) has timber-framed and tile-hung Wealden cottages and farmhouses. Modern estates use concrete tile and EPDM. Each requires a different approach.

After a strong south-westerly or easterly blow across Kent, look for slipped, cracked or missing tiles and slates, dislodged ridge or hip tiles, debris in valley gutters and parapet boxes, and damp patches on top-floor ceilings or chimney breasts. Coastal properties also need a check on salt-corroded fixings around lead flashing. Wealden properties need a check for storm-fallen tree limbs. If you spot anything, get it covered or assessed before the next weather front arrives.

We work across Kent from a base in Sussex, so the western side of the county around Tunbridge Wells, Tonbridge, Sevenoaks and Edenbridge is ground we are on regularly, and we travel east and north from there. If you are not certain whether your address is one we cover, the quickest thing is to ask. It costs nothing to find out.

Peg tiles are the small clay tiles that cover a great deal of older Kent property, laid in large numbers on steep pitches and originally hung on wooden pegs. They give a roof its character and they are also unforgiving to patch, because the tiles are small, there are thousands of them and a repair in the wrong shade reads from the ground straight away. Where the existing tiles are sound we work with them, and where new material is needed we match size, profile and colour as closely as we can source. Weathered tiles never match new exactly and we will tell you that before you commit.

More than people expect. Inland across the Weald the problems are slow ones: tree cover keeps slopes damp, leaf fall blocks valleys, and moss takes hold on the shaded side. On the coast from Folkestone round to Thanet it is the opposite, fast and mechanical, with wind lifting anything loose and salt working on fixings and flashings. Up on the estuary you get exposure plus a lot of large flat roofs. The covering may be identical in all three and the thing that fails will not be.

It is the sensible moment to look at it. Once the covering is off, the roof structure is accessible in a way it will not be again for decades, so bringing the insulation up to standard then costs a fraction of doing it as a separate job later. It is worth thinking about together with ventilation rather than on its own, because adding insulation without allowing air to move can cause problems it was meant to solve. We will set out the options as part of the survey.

Warm moist air rising from the house meets a cold surface in the roof and condenses on it. People often assume it is a leak, because the symptoms look the same: damp on the underside of the covering, wet insulation, staining on the timbers. The usual cause is a roof space that cannot breathe, sometimes because insulation has been packed in at the eaves and blocked the airflow. Correct ventilation is what deals with it, and it is far easier to build in during a re-roof than to retrofit afterwards.

Ridge and hip tiles were traditionally bedded in mortar, and mortar has a shorter working life than the tiles it holds, so cracked and missing pointing is one of the most common things we see on older Kent roofs. A dry ridge system fixes the ridge tiles mechanically instead, with a ventilated roll beneath, so there is no mortar to crack and the ridge line is ventilated at the same time. Where the covering underneath is still sound, that is often the sensible answer rather than re-bedding and waiting for it to happen again.