Addiscombe · CR0
Roof Repairs In Addiscombe
Slates slipping on your Addiscombe terrace, or a ceiling stain you can't trace?
Slate, lead and valley repairs for the Victorian and Edwardian streets between East Croydon and Woodside
Most Addiscombe roofs are older than anyone living under them. The terraces off Lower Addiscombe Road, Clyde Road and Canning Road were mostly covered in Welsh slate, and the slate usually has decades left in it. The nails don't. A slate on the front path after a calm night means an iron nail has rusted through after a century or more. That's age, not weather. Behind the front slope there's often a second roof you can't see from the street: a shallow butterfly valley, or a lean-to over the back addition, where leaves pile up and water sits. And inside the Chatsworth Road conservation area, the rules on what can change are tighter than anywhere else in the borough.
Free roof survey in Addiscombe
Four details and somebody will come and look at it. There is no charge for the visit, no obligation afterwards, and if the answer is that your roof is fine, that is what you will be told.
The people behind it
Addiscombe, from a family firm
Plenty of Addiscombe houses are Victorian terraces under Welsh slate, and a fair few are split into flats with several owners to keep in the loop. Roof Repairs Croydon is run by John and Mark, two brothers who run jobs together.
On a shared roof that's handy, because two people at the firm know the details, not one. Whoever rings first, you or the flat upstairs, will usually reach one brother or the other.
1,000+
Roofs put right
10 year
Written workmanship guarantee
£0
To have somebody come and look
Repair first
Replacement is the last resort
Built on the grounds of a military college
Addiscombe's street names come from India. The East India Company trained officers for its army at a seminary here from 1809 to 1861. When it closed, the British Land Company bought the grounds and laid out roads named after men who had made their reputations there: Canning, Clyde, Elgin, Havelock, Outram. Houses went up from the 1860s, and building carried on into Edwardian years as East Croydon became an easy commute. What's left is street after street of stock brick and slate, with plenty of the larger houses now split into flats.
On these roofs, age explains nearly everything. A slate roof laid in the 1870s or the 1900s was fixed with iron nails, and after a hundred-plus years of damp the heads have rusted away. Slates then let go one at a time, usually from the middle of a slope. The other weak point is round the back. Many terraces here have a butterfly roof, two slopes falling inwards to a central gutter that drains through the rear parapet, or a lean-to over the kitchen. Both block up and hold water against old lead, and the back bedrooms get it first.
Roof repairs Addiscombe asks for most
Roof Leak Repairs
A wet patch in an Addiscombe back bedroom usually comes from the butterfly gutter or where the lean-to meets the wall, not the front slope. We check both, from the loft and from the roof, before quoting.
Read more about roof leak repairs in AddiscombeChimney Repairs
Victorian stacks here often carry four or more pots and a century of patch-pointing. Lead and flaunching get repaired to match the original, which matters if you're inside the conservation area.
Read more about chimney repairs in AddiscombeGuttering
Cast iron runs shared across party walls, and parapet outlets that drain a whole butterfly roof. One blocked hopper on these terraces can put water into two houses at once.
Read more about guttering in AddiscombeThose three come up most on Addiscombe roofs. Everything else in the services menu is covered here as well.
What a roofer should know before touching an Addiscombe roof
These houses are old, packed close together and often split into flats. That changes how a repair should be done, and who needs to hear about it.
Chatsworth Road rules checked first
Inside the conservation area, changing anything on a house roof needs planning permission. Before quoting, we tell you whether your job is like-for-like repair or something Croydon Council has to approve.
Slate matched, not swapped
A few Welsh slates replaced with concrete tiles or a cheap import stand out from the street. We find reclaimed or matching new slate so the repaired patch doesn't announce itself.
Nails checked across the slope
If one slate went because its nail rusted through, its neighbours are probably close behind. We check a wider area and tell you straight whether that means a patch or stripping and refixing the slope.
The back roofs actually inspected
You can't see a butterfly valley or a lean-to from the pavement, so a quote written from the front of the house misses them. We get up and look at the back.
Written up for every flat owner
Where a house is split into flats, the roof is usually shared under the leases. We put the cause and cost in writing so whoever books the work can show the other owners.
"On Addiscombe terraces the leak someone rings us about is more often at the back of the house, in a butterfly valley or a lean-to, than on the front slope they can see from the road."
Based on Addiscombe jobs handled by Roof Repairs Croydon
A roof repair in Addiscombe, step by step
Ring, or send a photo
A picture from the pavement or the back garden is often enough to tell whether this is a today job or one that can sensibly wait until next week.
The free visit
We look over the front slope, then get round the back to the butterfly valley or lean-to, and go into the loft to see whether the slate nails have failed across the roof or in one spot.
What failed, and what let it
Before any figure is mentioned you hear what has gone wrong and the reason it went, with photographs from the roof and from the loft side.
A fixed price on paper
Each item on its own line. Scaffold or a tower, if one is needed at all, sits separately so you can hold it up against anyone else's quote.
The repair itself
Slipped slates refixed with copper tingles or new nails, valley lead redressed or renewed, parapet outlets cleared. Inside Chatsworth Road we stick to matching slate and the existing details unless permission is in place.
Signed off
Photographs of the finished work, gutters cleared of anything the job dropped into them, and the 10 year guarantee in writing before anyone leaves Addiscombe.
The 10 year guarantee, and why it is safe to offer
Promising a roof will stay dry is easy. What counts is what happens if it does not. Work booked through Roof Repairs Croydon carries a 10 year workmanship guarantee, on paper, handed to you on the day and written in language you can actually read. The slates, tiles, lead, mortar, membranes and rainwater goods carry their own manufacturer cover on top of that. It varies by product, so you get told which cover applies to your job rather than one headline number that would be wrong on most of them.
Here is the reason a guarantee like that is not a risk. Repairs come back for one reason above all others: the fault was never found in the first place. Somebody went up, saw a stain on the ceiling below, mended whatever looked worst directly above it, and left. Water does not cooperate with that approach. It lands on a slate, runs under it, drops onto a rafter and travels along the rafter before it finds anywhere to fall. On a wide hipped roof in Sanderstead or Shirley that can be five metres from where it came in.
Find the entry point and the repair holds for years. Miss it and no amount of guarantee wording helps anybody. That is why the survey happens before the price, and it is why, if the same water finds its way back into your house inside the guarantee period, putting it right costs you nothing.
10 year
Workmanship guarantee
1,000+
Roofs put right
Covered
Public liability insurance
Per product
Maker's own warranty
What to do in Addiscombe
Nothing to do with roofs. Three places worth an afternoon if you live here or are thinking of moving in.
Addiscombe Railway Park
A footpath and cycleway along the old Addiscombe branch line, which closed in 1997 to make room for the tram. The park opened in stages from 2007 and runs between East India Way and Dalmally Road, planted up with shrubs and young trees by volunteers.
View on Google Maps - Addiscombe Railway Park
Park Hill Park
Park Hill Recreation Ground rises to a brick water tower built in 1867. Its walled garden includes a memorial garden to Cicely Mary Barker, the Croydon-born illustrator of the Flower Fairies books. It's a short walk from the Chatsworth Road streets.
View on Google Maps - Park Hill Park
Ashburton Park
Laid out by Croydon Corporation in 1924 in the grounds of an 18th-century house at the Woodside end of Addiscombe. The remains of a chapel and a 19th-century lodge survive from the years the house was a convent orphanage.
View on Google Maps - Ashburton ParkWhere Addiscombe sits on our patch
From our base on Penwortham Road, CR2 0QS: about 10 minutes. Planning and building control here sit with London Borough of Croydon.
What Croydon homeowners say
From roads across the borough, once the ladders had gone.
"Damp patch on our landing ceiling for about three years. Two roofers had been out and both mended the tiles directly above it, and neither made the slightest difference. This chap spent twenty minutes in the loft with a torch before he even went outside, then showed me a photo of a split in the lead in the valley about four metres away from the stain. Fixed it in a morning. Three winters on and nothing."
"Water was coming down the front bedroom wall every time it rained hard and I had convinced myself the roof was finished. It was the gutter. Half of it had dropped so the water was sitting in the middle and going over the front rather than down the pipe. He reset the brackets and cleared the gully, charged me a fraction of what I had budgeted for, and told me the roof itself had years left. Could easily have sold me a new one."
"Ours is in the Chatsworth Road conservation area and I had no idea the rules on roof work here are stricter than the rest of Croydon. He knew straight away, explained what I could and could not do without an application, and did the repair in matching slate. That saved me a very awkward conversation with the council later on."
"Lost most of the ridge tiles along the back in a February gale. Rang in the morning, sheeted the same afternoon so the weather could not get in, came back the following week when it was dry and rebedded the whole ridge properly. Sent me photos of everything for the insurance without me even asking. The bill was exactly what the quote said it would be."
"Gutters had been overflowing under the trees for years and the fascia behind them had gone soft. What I appreciated was that he explained why the timber had rotted rather than just quoting to replace it, and pointed out the new soffits needed vents or I would end up with condensation in the loft instead. Nobody had ever mentioned that to me before."
Had us out to your roof?
Two minutes writing a review does more for a small local firm than any amount of advertising, and it helps the next person in Croydon work out who to ring.
Other towns we cover, and what we do there
The same services and the same guarantee apply across every town below, from the Norbury end of the borough down to Caterham.
Roof repair costs in Addiscombe
On an Addiscombe terrace the price mostly turns on two things: how far the nail failure has spread, and how we reach the back roof. Refixing a handful of slates off a ladder is a small job. A butterfly valley behind a parapet often needs a tower or scaffold through a narrow side return or a neighbour's garden. Matching Welsh slate costs more than imported, and inside Chatsworth Road that choice isn't really yours to make.
Read the cost guideAddiscombe roof repair questions
Do I need planning permission for roof work in the Chatsworth Road conservation area?
If the work changes anything, almost certainly. Addiscombe comes under the London Borough of Croydon, and since January 2016 an Article 4 direction in the Chatsworth Road conservation area has taken away permitted development for all alterations to a house roof, as well as for painting the outside and fitting solar equipment. Like-for-like repair in matching materials still needs no application. Swapping slate for tile, adding rooflights or changing the roof's shape does. Outside the conservation area the usual permitted development rules apply.
Why do slates keep falling off my Addiscombe house when there hasn't been a storm?
The nails have rusted through. Victorian and Edwardian slate roofs here were fixed with iron nails that have now sat through more than a century of rain and condensation. Once the head goes, the slate slides out of its course. A few can be refixed with copper or lead tingles. If slates are moving all over one slope, stripping it and relaying the original slates on new battens usually works out cheaper than chasing them one at a time.
What is a butterfly roof, and why does mine leak?
Two slopes falling inwards to a central valley gutter, hidden behind a parapet. Lots of Addiscombe terraces have one. Leaves and silt collect in the valley, water backs up, and it gets over the edge of the old lead or under the slates either side. The stain usually shows on a top-floor ceiling near the middle of the house. Clearing the valley helps for a while. If the lead has cracked or the outlet is undersized, it needs relining.
Our house is split into flats. Who arranges the roof repair?
Normally the freeholder, or the leaseholders together if they own the freehold, depending on what the leases say. In practice one owner tends to ring us first. We survey, take photographs and write down the cause and the cost, so every owner sees the same evidence. That heads off most of the argument about who pays and whether the work is really needed.
Slate on the path, or a stain over the back bedroom?
Either is worth looking at before winter makes it worse. We come out to Addiscombe free of charge, check the front roof, the back roof and the loft, and tell you what has failed and whether the Chatsworth Road rules affect the fix.