Roofers in Wylde Green

The housing that defines Wylde Green went up between about 1925 and 1938: bay-fronted semis, hipped main roofs, clay plain tile or Rosemary, timber fascias, and a small gabled porch or bay roof at the front. There are thousands of them and they were well built. Ninety years on, the ones that have been looked after are still going.

They fail in three places, almost without exception. The first is the bay roof — a small, often nearly flat or shallow lead-covered roof over the front bay, which is the single most common source of a damp patch in a Wylde Green front bedroom. Original lead there is now brittle and has usually split along a fold. The second is the hip, where the mortar bedding on the hip tiles has blown and the tiles have started to slip. The third is the timber fascia and soffit behind the gutter, which has been painted over so many times that the rot underneath is invisible until someone puts a ladder up.

None of those three is a re-roof. That is worth saying plainly, because a lot of people in these houses get quoted for a full strip when what they actually need is a bay roof re-covered, the hips re-bedded with a dry ridge and hip system, and the fascias replaced. Done properly that is a fraction of the cost and it buys the roof another twenty years.

When a Wylde Green semi does genuinely need a full roof, the decision is whether to go back in clay plain tile or drop to concrete. We will do either and we will tell you honestly what the difference looks like from the pavement. On a street where every other house still has its original clay, a concrete re-roof is visible from three doors down, and it is visible forever.