Roof Replacement in Wiltshire

If your roof has one problem in one place — a cracked ridge, a bit of failed flashing — that's a repair, not a replacement, and we'll say so. Replacement makes sense when the problems aren't isolated: nail fatigue causing tiles to slip across the whole roof rather than in one spot, felt underneath that's perished and crumbling when you touch it, battens that have sagged or rotted, or a run of repairs in different places over a few years that tells you the covering itself is at the end of its life.

A full re-roof means stripping the existing covering back to the rafters, checking and replacing any battens that have had it, laying new breathable membrane, then re-covering with new ridge and hip work and fresh leadwork to every chimney and abutment. The old material — tiles, felt, battens, everything — goes off site in a skip, not left in a pile in the garden.

Material choice depends partly on what you want and partly on what the roof can carry. Concrete tile is the usual choice and lasts 40–60 years; clay tile runs 60–80 or more; natural slate can outlast the house at 80–100 years plus, though local weather has a real say in that — we've covered how in The Impact of Weather on Roof Longevity. Slate is heavier, too, and a roof structure built for lightweight covering may need checking — sometimes strengthening — before it'll take it.

Scaffolding goes up first and stays for the duration; the roof's stripped and re-covered in sections so it's never fully open to the weather, and we don't leave a job exposed overnight. Most re-roofs run one to two weeks depending on size and complexity — we'll give you a realistic timescale with the quote, not an optimistic one.