Roof repairs and new roofs in Crawley
Vision Roofing Services works out of Surrey and covers Crawley. Ring for a free estimate, or for free advice on any of the work listed below. Crawley is a new town. Most of its houses went up together, and their roofs are wearing out together too.
What roofs in Crawley are usually like
Crawley was made a new town in January 1947. Whole neighbourhoods were then built in one go, to a handful of repeating house types. West Green, Northgate, Three Bridges, Langley Green, Ifield, Pound Hill and Tilgate all went up through the 1950s.
Broadfield and Bewbush came later, from about 1970 onwards. So the roof age in Crawley depends on which part of town you are in. A 1950s roof and a 1970s roof are at different points in their life.
Most of it is concrete interlocking tile on a pitched roof. Concrete tile was the cheap answer to clay after the war, and it took over. A concrete tile is usually good for forty to sixty years.
That matters more than it sounds. When one house on a street needs the ridge doing, the house next door usually needs it too. Same tile, same age, same mortar, same weather.
What usually goes wrong here
The mortar at the gable edge cracks
The verge is the sloping edge of the roof at the gable end of the house. On these roofs it is bedded in mortar. The roof moves in the heat and the cold, the mortar does not, and it cracks. Once it is loose, wind gets under the edge tiles and lifts them. A dry verge replaces that mortar with caps that clip over the edge tiles and are fixed down.
Ridge tiles work loose along the top
The ridge is the line of tiles capping the very top of the roof. On a 1950s roof they sit in a bed of mortar and nothing else. Mortar shrinks and crumbles, the caps rock in the wind, and eventually one slides. A dry ridge holds every ridge tile down with a fixing instead. With no mortar up there, there is nothing left to crack or repoint.
The tiles reach their age all at once
A concrete tile does not fail neatly. It goes porous, the surface washes off, and moss takes hold and holds water against it. On a street of one house type, that happens to every roof within a few years of each other. Whole streets get there at the same time.
One blocked gutter, two wet walls
Terraces and semi-detached pairs share a gutter run. Water that cannot get past a blockage at one house comes over the front edge somewhere else along the row. The wall it soaks is often not the wall of the house with the blockage. On these estates the runs are long and straight, which is why they fill quietly and nobody notices until a wall goes dark.
What we do in Crawley
- Roof repairs, leaks and slipped tiles
- New roofs and reroofs in tile and slate
- Flat roofs, repaired and replaced
- GRP fibreglass flat roofs
- Dry verge caps, fitted over the gable edge
- Dry ridge systems, fitted over the ridge line
- Fascias, soffits, guttering and downpipes in UPVC
- Gutter cleaning, from £30
- Painting the outside of a house
Nearby towns we also cover
- Roof repairs and new roofs in Horsham
- Roof repairs and new roofs in Reigate
- Roof repairs and new roofs in Brighton
Not sure yet what the roof needs? Our roofing advice answers the questions we get asked most, before anybody comes out to look.
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Roofing work in Crawley
Estimates and advice are free. Ring and describe the problem, or send a photograph of it, and you will get a straight answer about whether it needs a repair or a new roof.
All work guaranteed.
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