Wet ceiling and gable end Mendip.

[Bob Delaney]

I live in a cottage on Mendip in Somerset. It was built in 1865 with rubble stone walls, Bridgwater pantile roof and lath and plaster ceilings (and L&P under much of the roof tiling at the front). The chimney beast and ceiling was damp and there was water pooling on the ceiling beside the chimney breast. This didn't appear to be a new problem as the chimney breast in the roof space had been cement rendered in 1975. I had the chimney re-flaunched with concrete some years ago and the concrete flashing replaced with lead at the same time. The tiles finish flush with the wall with a cement fillet and no facia boards.

Over a year ago I engaged a roofer to replace the roofing felt and tiles from the gable end and about 10 rows in. He removed the stone roof- ridge tiles, battens and tiles and pushed aside the lead flashing around the stone chimney. He replaced with new batons, modern felt, the old tiles, reset and pointed the stone ridge and carefully reinstated the lead flashing around the chimney - all looked OK.

However, after a short time (and particularly in the last wet year) the ceiling was wet in more places and the wall dark with damp coming down from above. I am not sure that the roofer was a specialist in old properties so it seems that he has made matters worse. I think the gable end wall could do with repointing which would help but the rain is simply soaking the wall by percolating through from above

Is there a roofer in my local area who knows how to resolve this problem.

 

[Cubist]

Hello and Welcome,

Stevers is another member here who hails from your part of the world and may know someone locally he can recommend. Look out for a response from him when he comes back on line.

Cheers,
Cubist

 

[Stevers]

I do all my own repairs including any roofwork, so I only ever use scaffolders. My roof is slate, with overhangs, bargeboards etc., so I also don't have any personal experience of working on pantile roofs or wet verges. So with that caveat, I reckon it's a reasonable looking roof, apart from that left hand side where the tiles don't look very well seated. The tiles at the gable end appear to be doubled up which is odd. I've not seen that before, and I don't know enough about pantile roofs to know why that would be necessary or if it could be a cause of problems.

On chimneys, I'm never convinced about anything that looks like cement flaunching, even when it's been not so neatly covered in lead. When you've got a leak near a chimney breast that would seem like a good place to start looking. Is it a large enough roof void to crawl into and see if water is entering round the flashing? Lastly, if you have pots, do the pots have cowls?

We have a member a bit further south near Glastonbury who had a pantile roof worked on, and might be able to recommend his roofer.

 

[a twig]

Youngs in Bath re-did my roof and did a fantastic job https://youngsroofingbath.co.uk/

I will caveat that it was nearly 10 years ago now but they were excellent and resolved all the existing issues with a reasonably complicated roof design
(lots of valleys and funky angles)

 

[a twig]

It looks to me from peering at the zoomed in photo that the new tiles are smaller or a different profile, so where the roofer re-used the existing very left edge of the tiles, they aren’t interfacing properly with the new ones, potentially dumping the water straight in underneath.

That would normally be caught by the felt but if it was only a partial felt replacement then that also might not be doing the job.

Have you been up into the loft space to investigate? It usually becomes obviously pretty quickly where any ingress points are. Being able to see daylight is often a good starter

 

[Stevers]

Which reminded me that I was able to watch Youngs re-do the roof on the bungalow next door to me, making a lovely job of the complicated leaded valley. Not their fault they were asked to use fibre cement slates when the then owner had insisted on natural slate for the development next door. Some years on it is of course covered in moss.