Emergency Roof Repairs · Croydon & the CR postcodes
Emergency Roof Repairs In Croydon
Water coming in right now and it cannot wait?
Same day make-safe across Croydon, then a proper repair once the roof is dry enough to do it
An emergency call-out has one job: stop water entering the building. That is not the same as fixing the roof, and anyone who tells you both can be done properly in the middle of a wet January evening is overselling it. Make it safe first, get it dry, then do the repair correctly in daylight with the right materials.
Free emergency roof repairs quote
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.
1,000+
Roofs put right
10 year
Written workmanship guarantee
£0
To have somebody come and look
Repair first
Replacement is the last resort
What you are seeing, and what it usually means
None of this replaces somebody actually looking at your roof, but it will tell you roughly what you are dealing with and how much of a hurry to be in.
Water running down an internal wall during heavy rain
Usually an overflowing or split gutter rather than the roof covering. Fastest of all the emergencies to stop, and the cheapest.
A ceiling bulging or sagging
Water pooling above the plasterboard. This one is genuinely urgent - a saturated ceiling can come down as a single sheet. Move what is underneath before you do anything else.
Daylight visible in the loft after wind
Tiles or slates displaced, and the felt below torn. It will get rapidly worse in the next spell of wind, because the exposed edge gives the wind something to lift.
Debris in the garden after a storm
Something has left the roof. Even if nothing is coming in yet, the gap it left will be the entry point next time it rains hard.
Why use us for emergency roof repairs in Croydon
Make safe first, price second
The immediate job is stopping the water. Conversations about a permanent repair happen afterwards, when you can think straight and read a quote properly.
No emergency premium
The rate is the rate. Turning up on a Sunday because your ceiling is coming down does not change what a slate costs to fix.
Nothing charged for looking
If we come out and it is a blocked gutter, or it is nothing at all, you are not billed for finding that out.
Temporary work that actually holds
Properly weighted and fixed sheeting, not a tarpaulin with a brick on it that has gone by Tuesday.
Photographs for your insurer
Taken at the time, before anything is disturbed, because that is the evidence a claim stands or falls on.
We come back and finish it
The make-safe is stage one of a job, not the job. The permanent repair is booked before we leave.
Why the south of the borough gets more of these calls
The exposed ground above Croydon takes a harder time of it than the low ground does. Kenley Airfield's Met Office long-term average is around 847mm of rain a year across roughly 130 rain days, along with about 35 nights of air frost, and the ridge at Sanderstead and Warlingham sits in the same band. New Addington has been called Little Siberia since it was built in the 1930s, and the nickname is honest - it genuinely runs colder than the rest of the borough, which means more freeze-thaw cycles working on mortar every winter. When a gale comes through, the first calls come from up there.
"One emergency call-out in five ends with a gutter cleared and nothing else. That is exactly why nobody is charged for the visit."
Based on the emergency roof repairs jobs handled by Roof Repairs Croydon
How a emergency roof repairs job runs
You describe the symptom
Which room, which wall, and does it only happen when the rain comes from a particular direction? That last question narrows things down more than people expect, before anybody has been anywhere near the roof.
Somebody comes and looks - loft included
Free, with no expectation that it becomes a job. Half the evidence is on the underside of the roof, so the loft gets looked at as a matter of course rather than as a favour.
You are told the cause before the price
In plain terms, with photographs where they make the point better than words. If you want to take that diagnosis to somebody else for a second quote, that is entirely reasonable.
A written, itemised price
Access priced as its own line, so it is obvious what you are paying to reach the work as opposed to doing it. The figure on the quote is the figure on the invoice.
The work, back to something solid
Failed material comes out until there is sound timber and sound masonry underneath. Matched covering, code 4 lead at the junctions, mortar mixed to suit the brick it is going onto.
Checked, cleared and guaranteed
The details either side get checked while the access is still up, the site is cleared, finished photographs come to you, and the written guarantee is handed over the same day.
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
Three questions worth asking whoever you use
Including us. If the answers do not stand up, that tells you something useful.
Do they charge to attend?
A call-out fee creates a bad incentive: having driven out and charged you, there is pressure to find work. Free attendance means the person on your roof has no reason to invent a problem.
Is the temporary fix actually temporary?
Sheeting is a legitimate stage one. Sheeting still on the roof six weeks later is a failure. Ask when the permanent repair is booked for, and get the date before they leave.
Are they photographing anything?
If you might claim, the state of the roof before it was touched is the whole case. A firm that does this regularly will photograph as a matter of course without being asked.
Make-Safe Versus A Permanent Repair
These are two different pieces of work and it helps to be clear which one is happening on the day.
| Comparison point | Emergency make-safe | Permanent repair |
|---|---|---|
| What it is for | Stopping water entering the building today. | Removing the fault so it does not happen again. |
| When it happens | Same day where we possibly can, in whatever weather. | Booked for a dry day, because mortar and adhesives will not cure in the wet. |
| How long it lasts | Weeks. It is a holding measure and should be treated as one. | Years, and it carries the ten year workmanship guarantee. |
| Materials | Sheeting, temporary fixings, sometimes a mechanical clamp on a split gutter. | Matched covering, code 4 lead where lead belongs, mortar suited to the brick. |
| Access | Ladder or tower, whatever gets somebody up there safely and quickly. | Whatever the job actually needs, which on the taller frontages means scaffold. |
| Cost | Charged for the work done, with nothing added for the hour or the day. | Quoted in writing before it starts, itemised, with access priced separately. |
What to do before anybody arrives
Move what you can out from underneath, and put a container down. If the ceiling is bulging, do not stand under it - a saturated plasterboard ceiling can drop all at once. If you can do it safely from a landing, put a small hole in the lowest point of the bulge to let the water out in a controlled way. Do not go into the loft with a torch and start pulling at wet insulation, and do not get on the roof yourself in wind.
See what a repair costs
What emergency roof repairs costs in Croydon
Attendance is free and the work is charged for what it actually takes. A gutter cleared is a small bill. Sheeting a stripped slope on a windy evening takes two people and costs more. What you will never see is a different price for the same work because of the hour it happened at.
See the full cost guideEmergency Roof Repairs - your questions
Do you charge extra for evenings or weekends?
No. The work is priced on what it takes, not on when you needed it. There is no call-out fee either, so if somebody comes out and the answer is that nothing needs doing tonight, that visit costs you nothing.
How fast can you get to me?
We are based in South Croydon, so most of the borough is fifteen minutes away and the outer parts of the patch - Caterham, Warlingham, West Wickham, Wallington - are not much further. For water actively coming into a house we will get to you the same day wherever it is possible to do so safely.
Will you go on a roof in a storm?
Not during it. Nobody responsible will, and anybody who says they will should worry you. What can usually be done during a storm is stopping the damage getting worse from inside, and containing the water. Work on the roof itself starts when the wind has dropped enough to be safe.
Should I claim on my insurance?
It depends on your excess and on what caused it. Storm damage is normally covered, wear and tear normally is not. Below about a thousand pounds it is often not worth the claim once the excess and the effect on your premium are taken into account. You will get the photographs and a written report either way, and you can decide with the numbers in front of you.
Can you just do the temporary fix and leave it there?
You can decide that, but it is a bad idea and we will say so. Sheeting is designed to hold for weeks, not seasons. It flogs itself to pieces in wind, the fixings work loose, and you end up with two problems instead of one.
My ceiling has come down. Do you do that as well?
We stop the water and make the roof safe. Plastering and redecoration are somebody else's trade and we will not pretend otherwise, though we are happy to say what needs doing and in what order so the ceiling is not made good before the roof is.
Also worth a look: Storm damage repairs ·Roof leak repairs ·Guttering
Where we work
Emergency Roof Repairs across the whole borough and over the boundary where it makes sense - from the Victorian terraces at the Thornton Heath end up onto the chalk at Kenley, Coulsdon and Sanderstead, and out to Wallington, Caterham, Warlingham and West Wickham.
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.
Get a free emergency roof repairs quote
Ring and describe what you can see, or send a message and somebody will come out and put their head in your loft. It costs nothing to find out what is wrong. The price you are quoted is the price you pay. And if the answer turns out to be that it can wait another few years, that is what you will be told.