The roof is the one part of a building where a small, cheap problem turns into a large, expensive one fastest. A slipped tile or a failed flashing lets water into the structure, and by the time it shows on a ceiling it has usually been wetting a rafter or a wall plate for months.
HD Building Services carries out roof repairs, re-roofing, flat roofing, leadwork and chimney work across Norwich and Norfolk, on modern housing and on traditional Norfolk pantile and peg tile roofs. We'll tell you honestly whether you need a repair or a re-roof, which isn't always the answer you get elsewhere. Fully insured, 5★ on Google, 10/10 on Checkatrade.
Roofing work we carry out
- Roof repairs. Slipped, cracked and missing tiles and slates, failed flashings, leak tracing, and repairs to valleys, verges and ridges.
- Re-roofing. Full strip and re-cover, including new breathable membrane, battens and any repairs to the structure underneath, in tile or slate.
- Flat roofing. Garage, extension and dormer roofs in EPDM rubber, GRP fibreglass and torch-on felt, with proper falls and detailing at upstands.
- Chimneys & leadwork. Chimney rebuilds and repointing, flaunching, pots and cowls, plus code-appropriate lead flashings, soakers, valleys and saddles.
- Heritage roofing. Norfolk pantiles and clay peg tiles, torching, lime bedding to ridges and verges, and reclaimed tile matching on period and listed property.
- Guttering & rainwater. Gutters, downpipes, fascias and soffits. The cheapest maintenance on any building, and the most neglected.
When a roof needs attention
- Visible slipped or missing tiles, or tiles and slates lying in the garden after a gale.
- Damp patches or staining on upstairs ceilings, particularly near chimneys, valleys and around dormers. Flashing failures are more common than tile failures.
- Daylight visible in the loft, or damp, dark or crumbling timbers around the eaves and wall plate.
- Sagging along the ridge or between rafters, which can indicate structural failure rather than a covering problem.
- Failed mortar at ridge, verge and hip, or a chimney with open joints and cracked flaunching.
- Ponding, splits or blistering on a flat roof, or a felt roof past roughly twenty years old.
- Overflowing gutters, which soak the wall below and cause damp that gets blamed on the wall rather than the gutter.
If the covering is sound and the battens and membrane underneath have life left, a repair is the right answer and we'll say so. If you're repairing the same roof every year, tiles are delaminating across the whole slope, or the battens have gone, then patching is money down the drain. We'll show you what we have found and let you decide with the facts.
Norfolk pantiles and traditional roofs
The pantile is the characteristic East Anglian roof covering, and a great many Norfolk cottages, farmhouses and outbuildings still carry their original clay pantiles or peg tiles. They're worth keeping. Reclaimed pantiles weather in a way no modern concrete tile matches, and on a listed building or in a conservation area, like-for-like replacement is usually a condition of consent anyway.
Traditional roofs need traditional detailing: lime mortar bedding at ridges and verges rather than hard cement that cracks and lets water track in, torching where appropriate, and careful sorting and re-use of sound original tiles with matched reclaimed units making up the shortfall. Where a roof is being stripped, we set the original tiles aside and re-lay them rather than skipping the lot. More on this on our heritage building page.
Leadwork
Most roof leaks we're called to aren't tile failures at all. They're failures at a junction, and that means lead. Cement fillets instead of proper lead flashings, lead of too light a code for the location, or over-long pieces that have split from thermal movement are the three we see most.
We use appropriate lead codes, keep individual pieces within recommended lengths so they can move without splitting, and dress and fix them properly into chases rather than smearing everything with mastic. It costs a little more once and then it lasts decades.
Flat roofs
Flat roofing has improved a lot. Old pour-and-roll felt roofs had a realistic life of perhaps ten to fifteen years; modern EPDM rubber membranes and GRP fibreglass systems will run much longer when installed correctly.
“Correctly” means the boring parts: adequate falls so water actually leaves the roof, a sound and dry deck underneath, proper upstands at abutments, and correctly formed edge trims and outlets. Ponding water is the enemy of every flat roof system, and it's nearly always a fall problem rather than a membrane problem. We'll check the deck before quoting, because covering a rotten deck with a good membrane just hides the issue for a year.