Coulsdon · CR5
Roof Repairs In Coulsdon
Is the bay window or porch on your Coulsdon semi letting the rain in?
Bay roof, porch canopy and exposed-slope repairs for interwar houses in CR5
Coulsdon is built up both sides of a chalk valley, and the higher you live, the harder the weather hits. On the roads climbing towards Farthing Downs and Coulsdon Woods, south-westerly rain reaches the roofs with very little to slow it down. Down on Chipstead Valley Road and Marlpit Lane, the problem is lower on the house. Coulsdon has a lot of 1930s bay-fronted semis, and the little roof over the bay and the canopy over the porch are where water usually gets in first. A wet patch under a front bedroom window rarely means the main roof is failing. Far more often, the bay is to blame.
Free roof survey in Coulsdon
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
Coulsdon, and who you'd talk to
Coulsdon's 1930s houses often let water in at the bay roof or porch canopy before the main roof gives any trouble. The people you'd talk to about that are John and Mark, brothers who run Roof Repairs Croydon as a family business.
Their thinking is so similar that decisions between them happen without much discussion, which keeps things moving. If one of them doesn't answer, you'll most likely get the other, and he'll know your job just as well.
1,000+
Roofs put right
10 year
Written workmanship guarantee
£0
To have somebody come and look
Repair first
Replacement is the last resort
Coulsdon, Croydon Council and the 1930s
Most people expect Coulsdon to be in Surrey. It feels like it, with the downs on the doorstep, and plenty of addresses still use the county name. For anything official, though, it is the London Borough of Croydon, and has been since Greater London was created. Most of the town is younger than it looks. A few older lanes and the church at Bradmore Green go back centuries, but the bulk of the housing arrived between the wars, when the railway and new roads turned farmland on the valley sides into semi-detached and detached houses for families working in London.
That interwar stock gives Coulsdon a recognisable roofing pattern. Main roofs are hipped and tiled, usually in clay or an early concrete tile, and many are in fair shape. The trouble is the front. A two-storey bay brings a small roof of its own that meets the main wall under a lead or mortar flashing, and the porch canopy below does the same. Both are fiddly and exposed, and both are often decades past their last proper look. On the high side of the valley the wind adds loose ridges and stripped verges.
Roof repairs Coulsdon asks for most
Roof Leak Repairs
Damp under a front bedroom window in Coulsdon usually comes from the bay roof or its flashing. We check that before anyone suggests touching the main roof.
Read more about roof leak repairs in CoulsdonFascias & Soffits
Interwar bays and porches often still carry painted timber boards. Once the paint goes, water gets into the end grain, and the gutter starts to sag away.
Read more about fascias & soffits in CoulsdonStorm Damage Repairs
Houses on the Farthing Downs side get the weather first. Ridge tiles, hips and verges up there take most of the punishment from a hard south-westerly.
Read more about storm damage repairs in CoulsdonThose three come up most on Coulsdon roofs. Everything else in the services menu is covered here as well.
Roof repairs that suit the way Coulsdon was built
Interwar houses on a valley side tend to go wrong in the same order, front first and top second. We work through them the same way.
Bays and porches checked first
The small roofs at the front of a 1930s house are the cheapest place to start and the most likely culprit. We rule them in or out before looking any higher.
Proper lead at the bay junction
Mortar fillets and flashing tape where a bay meets the wall crack within a few winters. We fit stepped or chased lead that moves with the house instead of splitting away.
Original tiles reused where we can
On a pair of semis, a new tile that does not match is obvious from the street. We salvage what we can from the back slope so the front still looks consistent.
Exposure taken into account
A house near the top of the valley needs firmer ridge and verge fixings than an identical one at the bottom. We price to where your house actually sits.
The right council named
Coulsdon is Croydon Council for planning and building control. If anything about your repair needs approval, we tell you so you contact the right team the first time.
"When a Coulsdon homeowner rings about a damp front bedroom, we usually find the fault at the bay roof or porch canopy rather than on the main roof above."
Based on Coulsdon jobs handled by Roof Repairs Croydon
A roof repair in Coulsdon, 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 start at the front: bay roof, porch canopy, the flashings where each meets the wall. Then the main slopes and the loft. On the higher roads we look harder at ridges and verges facing the downs.
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
Bay and canopy coverings are lifted, rotten boards and timbers replaced and new lead dressed into the wall. Main roof tiles are refixed or swapped with salvaged ones, and exposed ridges are mechanically fixed rather than bedded alone.
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 Coulsdon.
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 Coulsdon
Nothing to do with roofs. Three places worth an afternoon if you live here or are thinking of moving in.
Farthing Downs
The largest stretch of semi-natural chalk downland left in Greater London, managed by the City of London Corporation. Anglo-Saxon burial mounds and the traces of an Iron Age field system sit along the ridge, and the views from the top are wide.
View on Google Maps - Farthing Downs
Happy Valley Park
Croydon Council's largest open space, lying in the dry valley next to Farthing Downs. Most of the valley carries SSSI protection, and its flower-rich chalk grassland supports around a dozen species of orchid.
View on Google Maps - Happy Valley Park
St John the Evangelist, Old Coulsdon
The old parish church, mostly late thirteenth century, with a fifteenth-century tower. It is Grade I listed and stands in the Bradmore Green conservation area, built of Reigate stone and flint.
View on Google Maps - St John the Evangelist, Old CoulsdonWhere Coulsdon sits on our patch
From our base on Penwortham Road, CR2 0QS: about 12 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 Coulsdon
Most Coulsdon repairs are smaller than people fear, because the bay or porch is the problem rather than the whole roof. The price goes up with how much timber under a bay covering has rotted, which only shows once it is opened up. On the higher roads, exposure adds work: ridges and verges that need full mechanical fixing rather than a quick rebed. Access on stepped front gardens can mean a tower or scaffold where a ladder might do on a flat street.
Read the cost guideCoulsdon roof repair questions
Is Coulsdon in Surrey or Croydon for planning?
Croydon. Coulsdon is inside Greater London and the London Borough of Croydon handles planning and building control, despite the Surrey feel and the county name on many addresses. Like-for-like roof repair needs no application. Bradmore Green in Old Coulsdon is a conservation area, so changes to how a roof looks there deserve a conversation with Croydon Council first. People regularly contact Surrey or Tandridge by mistake, which only wastes time.
Why does my bay window roof leak when the main roof is fine?
Because the bay roof is small, low and full of joints. It has its own covering, often lead, felt or a few courses of tile, and a flashing where it meets the wall above. That flashing takes all the water running down the face of the house. When the mortar or old lead cracks, the water goes straight into the top of the bay and shows up as damp around the window.
Is a leaking porch canopy worth repairing, or should it come off?
Most can be repaired. If the timbers underneath are sound, a new covering and a properly fitted flashing are usually enough. If the wood has been wet for years and gone soft, the rotten parts get replaced at the same time. We only recommend a full rebuild if the structure itself has failed, and we will show you photographs of the reason.
Do houses on the Farthing Downs side of Coulsdon need different repairs?
Often, yes. Higher up, roofs face the full force of the south-westerly wind and rain coming off the open downs. That means more loose ridge and hip tiles, verges losing mortar and rain pushed under tile laps. We use mechanical fixings on ridges and verges up there so the repair holds through the next gale.
Damp patch under a window in Coulsdon?
Before you start worrying about the whole roof, let us check the bay and the porch. The visit is free and includes the loft. You get told what has failed, why it failed and what it costs to fix, all in writing.