Slate roofing
Well, this week the roofer finished replacing the roof on our house. It was actually mostly finished the week before, but there’s a single story bit of roofing at the front over the bay windows and front door, and the scaffolding to access the top was resting on it i.e. they had to wait for the scaffolding company to take down the scaffolding before they could finish.
Our roof was suffering from nail fatigue (where the head of the nail rusts through) – hardly surprising given the house was built in the 1930s, before galvanised and copper nails were around. The old slate was also breaking up, which is apparently caused by a lack of roofing felt or torching, and then freeze/defrost cycles. I’d already been up last year and reseated a number of slate, and earlier this year we had a number of slates come down from the edges in high-winds.
We had a couple of quotes for the replacement of the roof, the cost varied dramatically between people, in fact there was a difference of about 3k between the cheapest and most expensive quote we received. I strongly advocate getting at least three written quotes and comparing them carefully.
The company we chose was called Securaroof, who advertise in the local paper. I found the guy who runs the company to be friendly and not pushy when he came out to quote for the replacement. He was also quite happy to give me a couple of options for roofing material. I was impressed that every day during the job, the ground was swept before we returned home – the first day I was wary there might have been nails or shards of slate on the driveway, but everything had been carefully collected.
In terms of roofing material, we opted for a Spanish Slate – La Roca, over a man-made concrete based replacement material. Generally I think that the natural look of the slate is much better than the mechanically cut lines of the replacement products, and though real slate is more expensive than a man-made product, it wasn’t prohibitively so…