Beacon Basingstoke Roofing

Roofers in Winnersh

Winnersh sits 19.8 road miles north-east of Basingstoke, in Wokingham Borough, and grew in the railway age into the commuter village it is today. Its roofs run from older slate and clay terraces to family estates that have been extended over the years. Every roof gets a photographed survey first, and the price that follows is fixed and written down.

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Roof window fitted in a tiled pitched roof

Roofs we see in Winnersh

  • New EPDM flat roof on a brick extension

    Railway-age terraces and semis

    Winnersh was largely developed during the railway age, so its older streets carry the roofs of that period: natural slate or plain clay tile, small brick chimneys and lead lapped into the walls. After a century or more the weak points are rarely the slates or tiles themselves. They are the iron nails that hold them, the lead round the chimney and in the valleys, and the old timber behind the gutter line.

  • 1960s and 70s brick semi-detached houses with concrete interlocking tile roofs on a Basingstoke estate street

    Extended owner-occupied family houses

    Winnersh is now mostly a dormitory settlement, and the 2001 census counted 2,444 of its 2,953 households as owner occupied. That tells you who decides about the roof: the person who lives under it. Many of those houses have grown since they were built, with rear extensions, garage conversions and loft rooms, so a single house can carry a pitched tile roof, a flat roof and a dormer, each wearing out on its own timetable.

  • An Edwardian red-brick detached house with clay tile roof and tile-hung gables in north Hampshire

    Roofs beside the Loddon and Emm Brook

    The Emm Brook and the River Loddon run through Winnersh, and the Loddon forms its western boundary and flood plain. Houses near the water sit in damp, still air with trees close by. Roofs there stay wet longer after rain, moss builds on the north slopes, valleys fill with leaf litter and gutters overflow down the walls. Clearing and cleaning here is maintenance that heads off bigger bills.

19.8 road miles north-east of Basingstoke

Planning and building control in Winnersh

Wokingham Borough Council handles both planning and building control for Winnersh. Whether your own house is listed, or sits inside a designated area, is a question for the council's planning team through wokingham.gov.uk, and it is worth asking before you order any materials. Matching repairs are usually straightforward, but swapping one covering for another can bring consent into play.

On an ordinary house, building control is the likelier hurdle. The test set out by the Planning Portal is that a repair or re-cover escapes an application only while it stays modest: a small share of the whole structure, and under half of the roof surface. A full strip and re-cover on a railway-age terrace or a family semi can go past that, and then the roof's insulation may have to be upgraded. Swapping slate for concrete tile brings a weight question too, since a covering that adds 15% or more to the load needs approval, and we handle that side for you. Planning a roof window? Read our skylight planning permission guide before you decide.

What we find on Winnersh roofs

Winnersh grew with the railway and has since filled out with family houses, extensions and garages, so its roofs come in every age. The older terraces need attention to nails, lead and valleys. The later houses tend to need work wherever they were altered. Anything close to the brook gets wetter than it should.

Chapter 1: Why do slates keep slipping on our railway-age terrace in Winnersh?

What we find

A slate roof is held by nails, usually two to each slate, driven through the top edge into the batten (the timber lath the slates hang from). On roofs laid in the railway era those nails were often iron or zinc-coated steel, and after a century of damp air they rust through the shank. The slate then hangs on nothing but friction and the lap of the course above, and in a gust it slides a few centimetres or drops into the garden. Roofers call this nail sickness.

You can spot it from the pavement: slates that sit proud of their course, a dark gap where one has slipped, and fragments in the gutter or on the path. In the loft, look for daylight at the joints and a damp patch on the sarking (the boards or felt under the slates). A roof with a few slipped slates is not necessarily at the end of its life, because the slate itself is often the longest-lived part.

What we fix

We tap along the courses and lift a sample of slates to see whether the nails or the slates are failing. If the slate is sound and only the nails have gone, we strip the affected area and refix on copper or stainless nails. Where a slate has lost its hold at the top, a copper clip called a tingle can be added to the tail. Cracked or delaminated slates are replaced with matching ones, reclaimed where the colour matters.

Labour for a single slate repair typically runs £100 to £250, the slate itself £5 to £25, and scaffold or a tower £300 to £800 where one is needed. Those are ballpark figures; your fixed quote follows the survey. Once nail sickness has spread across a whole slope, patching costs more than it saves and we say so. Our slate roofing page sets out when a re-lay beats repeated repairs.

Chapter 2: Why does moss keep coming back on our roof near the Emm Brook?

What we find

Moss needs water, shade and something to grip, and roofs close to a brook or a river flood plain supply all three. The air stays damp, north-facing slopes get little direct sun, and the pitted face of a concrete tile or the lap of a plain clay tile holds a film of moisture long after the rain stops. The moss then does damage of its own. It packs into the gaps between tiles, holds water against the surface, and in winter the trapped water freezes and flakes the tile.

Look for green or black patches on the shaded slope, tiles that look furry at the edges, and gutters with a green silt of moss and granules in the bottom. Trees make it worse, because leaves and seed settle in the valleys (where two slopes meet) and behind chimneys, rot down and feed the next crop. If water pours over the front of the gutter in a downpour, an outlet is probably already blocked.

What we fix

We clear moss by hand with brushes and scrapers, then apply a biocide wash that keeps working after we have gone. Pressure washing is not our method for roof tiles, since it can strip the surface from older concrete and drive water up under the laps. Gutters and downpipes are cleared on the same visit, and we photograph the valleys before and after so you can see what was in them.

Hand removal with a biocide wash is reported at £748 on a small roof, with £863 and £978 quoted for average and large ones, as typical UK ranges; your fixed quote follows the survey. Cleaning only makes sense if the tiles underneath are sound, which we check as we go. Where gutters are failing too, our roof cleaning and guttering pages show what else belongs in the same job.

Chapter 3: Should we patch or replace the flat roof on our Winnersh house extension?

What we find

Wherever a Winnersh house has been extended, a flat roof is likely somewhere on it: the rear kitchen, the garage conversion, the porch, sometimes the top of a dormer. Many were finished in bitumen felt or an old mastic asphalt. Layered felt cracks as it ages, particularly at the upstand (the short vertical edge where the flat roof meets the house wall) and along the drip edge where it overhangs the gutter. Water finds the cracks, sits on the deck and soaks it.

The signs are brown ceiling stains under the extension, a bounce or soft spot when the roof is walked on, pools that stay long after the rain has stopped, and blisters that look like bubbles under the surface. Blisters on their own are not always leaks. Water in the boards beneath is a different matter, because wet timber stops holding fixings and starts to rot.

What we fix

If the deck is dry and the felt has failed only at one edge, a local repair may be all that is needed. When the deck is soft or the water is widespread, we strip back to the boards, replace the wet ones and re-cover. EPDM is a single-sheet synthetic rubber membrane laid in one piece, which suits a simple rectangle. GRP is fibreglass matting that is laid with resin and sets rigid, which suits awkward shapes such as a roof that steps round a dormer.

Per square metre, supplied and fitted, the typical UK range runs from £60 to £100 for felt, through £80 to £120 for rubber, up to £100 to £160 for fibreglass; your fixed quote follows the survey. Where the work is notifiable we handle the Building Regulations side. Our flat roofing page explains how we choose between the materials.

Chapter 4: Where is the leak coming from around the chimney on our Winnersh semi?

What we find

A chimney is the most awkward place on a pitched roof to keep watertight, because a masonry stack passes through a tile or slate surface that moves with the weather. The joint is sealed with lead: a flashing (a strip of lead dressed into the brickwork and over the roof covering) and soakers, the small lead pieces interleaved with each tile or slate up the sides. On many older houses the flashing is actually a cement fillet, a mortar bead that cracks, and on any house the lead can lift where the wall mortar has weathered.

A leak here shows as a brown mark on the chimney breast upstairs or a stain on the ceiling beside it. Check the loft too: wet timber round the stack, white salts on the brickwork, or rain tracking down the flue all point the same way. The stack itself may also need attention, with crumbling pointing and a failing cap letting rain in from above.

What we fix

We inspect the lead, the pointing and the cap together, because fixing one and leaving the others only moves the leak. Cement fillets are raked out and swapped for lead flashings, with soakers sized to the tile or slate gauge, the chimney is repointed where the mortar has gone, and new flaunching (the mortar crown that holds the pots) or a cap sheds water properly. Where the flue is no longer used, a ventilated cap keeps it dry.

Typical UK prices reported for chimney leadwork are £350 to £920, averaging £570, and flashing all four sides of a stack is about £525 before scaffold, nearer £1,000 once it is added. Treat that as a rough guide, because the number you sign up to comes from your fixed quote after the survey. For more on the work, see chimney repairs and lead roofing pages go further into the work.

Winnersh roofing questions

Should the original clay tiles on an older Winnersh house be kept or replaced?

Old clay tiles are often worth keeping if they are sound, since they were made to last. We lift a few to check for cracks, flaking faces and failing nibs. If most are good, we strip them, sort them, and refix them on new battens and felt, replacing the odd broken one with a reclaimed match. If they are failing, a new covering follows the survey.

Our garden backs onto the Emm Brook. Do the trees and damp change what you recommend?

They change the maintenance more than the roof covering. Shade and damp mean more moss, fuller gutters and faster wear on the timber at the eaves, so we suggest clearing the roof and gutters regularly and checking the fascia boards for soft spots. We photograph what is building up so you can see it, and we do not recommend renewing sound tiles just because they have a green film.

Does re-roofing my Winnersh house need building control approval?

It depends on how much you are doing. Small repairs usually need no application, provided the job stays small against the house as a whole and against the roof itself, but a full strip often goes past that. Wokingham Borough Council's building control team or a registered building control approver deals with it, and we manage the paperwork on notifiable jobs.

Can we add a roof window to our loft in Winnersh?

Often, yes, but the rules depend on the house and where the window goes. Start with our skylight planning permission guide, and ask Wokingham's planning team if your house might be listed or in a designated area. New or replacement roof windows in an existing home need to meet 1.4 W/m²K or Window Energy Rating Band B under Part L.

Do nesting birds or bats near Winnersh Meadows affect roof work?

They can. Roofs close to open green space are more likely to host roosting bats or nesting birds, and both are protected. Winnersh Meadows is a 10-hectare country park on the southern side of the A329(M), so green ground is never far from a Winnersh roof. If we see signs of either at the survey, the timing of work may have to change or a survey be arranged, and we tell you before anything starts.

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