Beacon Basingstoke Roofing

Roofers in Reading

Reading is 18.2 road miles north of Basingstoke by the A33, a Berkshire town at the meeting of the Thames and the Kennet. The council's own appraisals describe Welsh slate and red clay tile over brick in its older streets, from Georgian terraces on Castle Hill to Victorian streets in polychrome brick. We photograph what is up there before we price it.

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Modern 2000s brick houses with grey concrete tile roofs on a new estate near Basingstoke

The roofs of Reading

  • A row of Victorian terraced houses with Welsh slate roofs and brick chimneys in Reading

    Welsh slate on Georgian and Victorian streets

    The council's own appraisal of the Russell Street and Castle Hill area says the roofs of the Georgian houses on Castle Hill are largely Welsh slate, and that the roofs along Oxford Road are almost entirely slate. Slate lasts a very long time, but the iron nails holding it do not, so these roofs fail by slipping slates and failed lead before the stone itself gives out.

  • A Georgian brick town house with a slate roof and parapet in a Hampshire market town

    Red tile and brick, with polychrome detail

    The same appraisal names brick and tiles, mostly red, as the common thread of the area, and picks out polychrome brickwork in grey, blue, tan and red on the Victorian terraces. Those patterned stacks and gables are decorative and exposed, which means the brick, the mortar joints and the roof junctions beside them take more weather than a plain wall would.

  • New EPDM flat roof on a brick extension

    Stucco, stone dressings and flat extensions

    Alongside slate and red tile the appraisal lists stucco and stone dressings, and behind many terraced houses sit later flat-roofed kitchens and bathrooms, with shops and offices closer to the centre. Each needs a different approach. Stucco and stone shed water in their own way, while a flat roof lives or dies by its falls, its upstands and its drainage outlets.

18.2 road miles north of Basingstoke

Consent and building control for Reading roofs

Reading Borough Council is the planning authority here, and its building control team is the local-authority route for notifiable roof work. The borough has 15 conservation areas, among them Russell Street and Castle Hill, Market Place and London Street, Eldon Square, and St Mary's Butts and Castle Street, so a good many older roofs sit inside one. The council publishes appraisals, and the Russell Street and Castle Hill appraisal shows how closely it reads the materials: slate, red tile, stucco and stone dressings are treated as part of the character.

Matching what is already there is usually the easy path. Replacing Welsh slate with a different covering, or altering a roof that can be seen from the street, can need consent, and a listed house adds listed building consent on top. Phone the council's conservation team with your postcode first, because the boundaries are irregular and a house next door may be outside one. When a whole slope is stripped and relaid, the Building Regulations may need notifying, and the forms are ours to handle. For roof windows, see our conservation rooflights guide before you choose a model.

What we find on Reading roofs

A town this size has every era of roof in it, and most of the work we expect to be asked about falls into four groups: slate on the older terraces, lead and stucco on the Georgian houses, tall decorative chimneys on Victorian streets, and the flat roofs behind and between them.

Chapter 1: Why are slates sliding off the roof of our Victorian terrace in Reading?

What we find

A Welsh slate roof is built from thin stone sheets, each hung from two nails and covered by the slate above it. When the roof is a century and a half old, the nails are usually the part that has aged worst. Iron corrodes in the damp that collects under slates, the shank thins, and the slate slips an inch or two. Then it hangs from one nail, then none, and drops into the gutter or onto the path below.

On streets like those off Oxford Road, where the council describes roofs as almost entirely slate, one house after another may show the same pattern. Look from the pavement for dark gaps, slates that sit crooked, or stone chips in the gutter. Inside, a brown mark on an upstairs ceiling below a missing slate is typical, and in the loft you can sometimes see daylight where the felt has long since perished.

What we fix

Individual slates are replaced from above without disturbing the course around them: the broken one is cut out, a strip of lead or a stainless hook is fixed to the batten, and a matching slate slides in. We hold each replacement against the roof to check thickness and tone, and reclaimed Welsh slate is our first choice where the street can see it. If a whole slope is losing slates, the nails have gone and the honest answer is a strip and re-lay on new battens, reusing the sound slates.

For a typical UK range, natural slate re-roofing is reported from £120 up to £180 a square metre, and Welsh slate from £140 to £180. Those figures are guides taken from UK price surveys, and our own number comes only after the photographs. Our slate roofing page sets out when repair stops making sense.

Chapter 2: Can the lead and stucco on a Georgian house on Castle Hill be repaired without redoing the roof?

What we find

Georgian terraces were designed to look flat-fronted and clean, so the roof is often tucked behind a parapet, a low wall at the edge of the roof, with a gutter running behind it. Lead lines that gutter and covers the top of the wall. Lead moves with the sun, expanding and contracting every day, and when a sheet is laid too long or fixed too tightly it fatigues, cracks along the folds and lets water through to the timbers below.

Stucco is the render on the front face, and where it meets the roof the two have to be sealed together. Cracks in stucco let rain run behind it, and a blocked outlet in the parapet gutter sends water over the lip into the wall. You see it as a damp patch high on an inside wall, peeling paint at the top storey, or a stain that tracks down from the cornice.

What we fix

If the lead has cracked but the boards under it are sound, we cut out the failed lengths and fit new lead in sheets short enough to move freely, with rolls and drips (the steps that let water run off) formed to the rules of the trade. We clear and test the gutter outlet before leaving, and renew any rotten boards so the new lead is not laid on a weak base. Joints between lead and render are dressed so that the lead is lapped beneath, not stuck on with sealant.

Where a house is listed, or in a conservation area, we recommend like-for-like lead and photograph every stage for the council. Read about leadwork on period and listed homes for the detail. Typical UK leadwork costs vary widely with access, so the survey photographs come first.

Chapter 3: The brick chimney on our Reading house has patterned bands and loose mortar. What can be done?

What we find

Victorian terraces in the area carry polychrome brickwork, bands and patterns in grey, blue, tan and red, and on a chimney stack those patterns sit high on the roof where nothing shelters them. Bricks of different clays absorb water at different rates. The mortar between them is often a soft lime mix, and it weathers back until the joint is hollow, and the pattern starts to loosen course by course.

The signs from the ground are a lean, a crumbling edge at the top of the stack, or sand-coloured grit in the gutter. At the base, the lead flashing and the soakers (the small lead pieces tucked under each tile at the side) may have lifted. The chimney may also have lost its pots or its flaunching, the mortar cap that sheds water off the top, which allows water down inside the flue and onto the chimney breast below.

What we fix

We repoint with a mortar matched to the old one in strength and colour, because a hard cement joint would trap moisture and make the softer bricks flake. Flaunching is renewed, loose pots are rebedded, and the flashings are replaced with fresh lead dressed into the brickwork. If part of the stack has gone, we rebuild that section in bricks that match the pattern, and we tell you before work starts if the colours cannot be matched exactly.

Typical UK ranges quoted for this work are £450 to £1,200 for repointing a chimney and £350 to £920 for leadwork around it, so you can judge any figure you are given. The price you receive from us comes after the survey. Our chimney repairs page explains how to tell repointing from a rebuild.

Chapter 4: What is the best way to re-cover the flat roof on the back of our Reading terrace?

What we find

Rear kitchens, bathrooms and shop extensions in town streets are usually flat-roofed, and they are often squeezed between a party wall on one side and the main house on the other. That produces a lot of junctions, each a place for water to get in. The usual faults are a membrane that has split along a seam, upstands (the short vertical edges where the roof meets a wall) that were left too low, and shallow falls that leave water sitting in one corner.

The sign indoors is a ceiling stain that comes and goes with rain. If the roof is old felt, you may see blisters, cracked surfaces and bare patches where the stone chippings have washed off. Water that stays on a roof for days tells you the falls are wrong, and no coating will fix a fall that was never there to start with.

What we fix

We survey the deck from above and below, then choose between repair, overlay and strip. A localised split can be repaired, but once water has soaked the insulation or deck, the answer is to strip back to the timber, correct the falls with tapered insulation, and lay a new membrane. EPDM (ethylene propylene diene monomer, a rubber membrane delivered as one sheet) suits a simple rectangle. GRP (fibreglass resin that sets in place) copes better with awkward outlines and pipes coming through.

For orientation, the typical UK range per square metre starts at £60 and tops out at £100 for felt; rubber sheet sits between £80 and £120; fibreglass runs from £100 up to £160. Our price for your roof is fixed after the survey. See our flat roofing page for the options, or commercial roofing if the building is a shop or office.

Questions from Reading homeowners

How do you repair a bay roof or parapet gutter on a Victorian terrace in Reading?

Victorian terraces often have lead-lined parapet gutters behind a brick wall and small bay roofs that are hard to see from the street. Splits in the lead or blocked outlets let water into the wall and ceiling. We survey from above, photograph the lead and outlets, and repair or replace the lining. Access is often by scaffold, which we plan with you.

Is my Reading street inside one of the conservation areas?

The council has 15, and some run street by street, so the only safe check is your postcode against the council's map. Russell Street and Castle Hill, Market Place and London Street, Eldon Square and St Mary's Butts and Castle Street are among them. If you are inside one, speak to the conservation team before changing any roof material.

Does living near the Thames or Kennet floodplain change how you work on a roof?

The rivers meet at Reading and the floodplains of both occasionally flood, which is mostly a ground-level matter, but it affects us in two ways. Scaffold needs firm, dry ground, so a wet spell can move a start date. And roof drainage matters more where the water table is high, so we check downpipes and gutter outlets are clear and discharge away from the walls.

Can you match Welsh slate on an old Reading house?

Usually, yes. We source reclaimed Welsh slate for visible slopes and new Welsh slate where only a rear pitch is being done, and we check size and thickness against the original before fixing anything. Spanish slate is cheaper, but its colour and finish can sit differently beside weathered Welsh on a street frontage, so we show you samples first.

Do you work on shops and offices in the town centre as well as houses?

We do. Commercial work in a busy centre brings its own constraints, such as access, loading, working hours and keeping neighbours clear of falling debris, and we plan those with the building manager. The survey and photographs are the same as for a house, and so is the fixed written price that follows.

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