Can You Repoint Ridge Tiles Yourself?

What repointing a ridge actually involves

Pointing means raking out the crumbled mortar from the joints and ends of the ridge tiles and filling them with fresh mortar. On a roof that is otherwise sound, that is a modest job. The difficulty is getting to the ridge safely. A ladder leaning on the gutter reaches the eaves, not the ridge, and a roof ladder hooked over the ridge needs a firm footing on tiles that may be mossy, brittle or wet. Concrete and clay tiles crack under a foot placed in the wrong spot, and a cracked tile is a new leak.

The safety problem

Falls from roofs and ladders are among the most common causes of serious injury in home maintenance. The risk rises with height, with a steep pitch, with wind, and with a roof surface you cannot trust. Ridge work is worse than most roof jobs because you are working with both hands, lifting mortar, and you need to lean towards the ridge. The Health and Safety Executive publishes guidance on working at height on hse.gov.uk, and its basic point is that the safest approach is to avoid working from a ladder where a proper platform is possible. A tower or scaffold on the gable end, or an access platform, solves most of the problem, but hiring and erecting one adds time and cost to a small job.

Why mortar alone is no longer the standard

There is a second reason to be careful. Under BS 5534:2014, ridge and hip tiles are meant to be fixed mechanically, with clips, screws or straps, and not to depend on the mortar bed alone. A DIY repoint that simply fills the joints leaves the underlying bed weak, so the ridge can still loosen. Our guide to ridge tiles and the mechanical fixing rules explains what the standard asks for, and our comparison of re-pointing and re-bedding shows when pointing alone is not enough.

If you still want to try

We would rather you did it safely than not at all. Use a scaffold tower or hired platform, not a ladder alone. Do not work in wind, rain or frost, and do not go up alone. Choose a mortar mix and colour that suits the existing tiles, and keep it off the tile faces, because staining is difficult to remove. Check each tile for movement before pointing: if a tile rocks, it needs re-bedding, not pointing. Wear gloves and eye protection, as cement burns and chips fly when raking out.

Be honest about what you see. If more than the joints are crumbling, if tiles are shifting, or if the bed beneath is hollow, pointing is cosmetic and the fault will return. A roofer can check from the ground with binoculars, or take photos on a free survey so you can decide with the facts.

Common mistakes on a DIY ridge

The first is pointing over loose mortar. New mortar will not bond to a crumbling surface, so everything weak has to be raked out back to a firm edge, and that dust and debris then falls onto the roof, into the gutter and sometimes down the slope onto the path. The second is filling too wet, which slumps and stains the tile faces, or using a mix that is too strong, which cracks away from softer old clay. The third is pointing in cold or damp weather. Fresh mortar that freezes before it has set is spoiled, and a ridge done in November can fail by the next spring.

A fourth, less obvious mistake is blocking the ventilation. Some ridges are designed to let a little air out of the roof space, and a careless repoint can seal gaps that were meant to stay open. Another is leaving the end tiles unsupported, since the last tile at a gable takes the wind first and is the first to lift. None of these is hard to avoid, but each needs the sort of experience that comes from doing the work repeatedly, and from being able to see the line of the whole ridge from above.

When a roofer is the better call

Hire it out if the roof is steep, the ridge is more than a single storey up, the tiles are old or moss-covered, or you are not certain the ridge is only pointing deep. We carry the access equipment, we photograph the ridge before and after, and we give you a fixed written quote. Where the ridge needs more than pointing, we say so and show you why. See our ridge, verge and dry-fix work in Basingstoke for the full range.