What Does Stripping a Roof Involve?

Before anything comes off

The strip starts with preparation. Scaffolding goes up and is checked, and the skip is positioned with a chute clipped to the scaffold. Gutters may be taken down or protected, and satellite dishes and aerials are removed. Garden furniture and cars are moved, and inside the house the loft is cleared. Sheeting and spare underlay are put on site, because the point of a controlled strip is that the roof can be closed in at any moment. The crew checks the forecast and decides how much to open.

The order of work

The ridge and hip tiles come off first. These are often bedded in old mortar that crumbles or is stuck hard, and they are removed carefully because they cover the top of the roof. Then the field of the roof: tiles or slates are lifted off one course at a time, starting at the ridge and working down, and passed to the chute or stacked on the scaffold if they are going to be reused. Our article on reusing old roof tiles explains how they are sorted.

After the tiles, the battens are pulled off, which is noisy and dusty. The old underlay or felt, often torn, brittle and nailed through, comes away in rags. Lead flashings are taken off carefully if they are to be recycled, since lead is valuable and sold for scrap. Verge and eaves details are removed, with soffit and fascia work done where it is part of the job.

Done in sections

A roof is never fully open. The crew strips an area, checks the timbers, then lays new underlay and battens before moving on, working across a slope or from one end to the other. At the end of each day the open area is sheeted and made safe. This takes discipline and slows the first day, but it is the proper way to keep the house dry, and it is why the roof looks half old, half new for a day or two. The page on what happens if it rains during a roof replacement explains the cover arrangements in more detail.

What the bare roof shows

Once the covering is off, you see what has been hidden for decades. Rafters are checked for rot, particularly where they meet the wall plate, the timber bedded on the wall that carries them, and around chimneys and valleys where water has run. Wall plates, purlins and ceiling joists are inspected for woodworm and movement. Gaps around chimney stacks, party walls and the verge show where the old roof was loose. Old insulation and wiring are noted.

If timber is damaged, it is repaired by cutting out the rot and fixing a new section alongside, called sistering, or replacing the timber. This is the cost that cannot be known until the strip, which is why a quote should say how rot repairs are priced, per metre or per item. We photograph anything we find and show you, so any extra is explained with evidence.

Things that need extra care

Older roofs can hold surprises. Asbestos cement sheets appear on some garages and outbuildings, and sometimes on older extensions. HSE guidance treats lifting such sheets out whole as non-licensed work, but it still calls for a written risk assessment, proper controls and trained people, and the job becomes notifiable if the sheets are likely to be smashed. If the roof may contain asbestos, tell us at the survey, and see the HSE's guidance at its non-licensed asbestos work page.

Wildlife is the other one. Bats and nesting birds are protected, and a roof with signs of either may need the work timed or surveyed first. Wasps' nests and pigeon fouling in the eaves are less protected but unpleasant. All of these are worth mentioning at the survey.

Chimneys, dormers and other details

The strip is not uniform across the roof. Around chimneys the old lead flashing and soakers, the small folded pieces of metal that slot between tiles at an abutment, are removed with care and the brickwork is checked for loose pointing. Dormer cheeks and roofs are stripped separately, and valleys, where two slopes meet and water runs in a channel, are opened to see the lead or tile beneath. Roof windows are unscrewed and set aside or replaced. Each detail adds time, and each hides its own potential problem, which is why the strip of a complicated roof is slower than a plain gable of the same area.

After the strip

With the roof bare and checked, the new work begins: underlay, battens and the covering. Our page on whether a new roof needs new battens explains why that timber is almost always replaced. The strip also generates the weight of waste, which is why the skip arrangement matters.

Beacon strips in sections, sheets the open areas daily and photographs what is found underneath. The quote is fixed and written, with rot repairs priced clearly, and the wider job is described on the roof replacement page.