Leaky roof, discontinued tiles...

King

After hearing from the wife that water was dripping out the the bathroom lights I did some investigating...

It turns out a tile vent was letting in water, which soaked through the insulation and made it's way to the holes where the bathroom spotlights are situated.

Thankfully we were home at the time and managed to catch the water with various buckets pretty quickly.

Next day a roofer comes to take a look, with a plan to replace the vent with roof tiles to fix the issue (we have other vents that aren't leaking so ventillation should still be fine).

This morning a message comes through, really sorry but I can't get hold of the tiles, they've been discontinued. When asking where we go from here, aside from suggesting retiling the entire roof nothing else was suggested.

Surely there must be a more sensible option here, a quick search for the vent tiles also brought up nothing.

Hopefully someone with a little more experience can give some insight here.

Many thanks.

grumbler

What's wrong with the vent? Can't it be repaired?

What's the name of the tiles? (Ask the roofer).

That said, I am no expert and have no idea how this vent works and whether it's really needed.

Belenus

Unless there are a lot of other issues with the roof, retiling the entire roof is ridiculous.

One option as a temporary, or possibly permanent, measure might be to remove that vent tile and replace it with a normal tile from the lowest level near the gutters. Choose the most inconspicuous spot.

You could then seal the vent tile on the underside to make it waterproof and put it where you removed the normal tile.

That might be a daft suggestion so please check with experts.

grumbler

If the vent isn't absolutely necessary, it can be replaced with a shaped piece of led. Any roofer has to be able to do this simple repair. Or even a handyman if he can get a piece of led from a local scrap metal merchant.

GDB2222

The way these work is that any water entering the grille dribbles out through small holes in the bottom edge of the vent tile. There’s lots of dirt and moss on that roof, so the holes could have become blocked. That would mean the water overflows into the loft, instead of running out of the bottom edge of the tile. 

It may just need unblocking. I suggest that the roofer removes it carefully and brings it down to ground level for inspection. 

A photo taken from ground level may show the holes.

Yorkie006

If you can find out the name of the tile, any change you could post on local facebook pages etc? Someone might have one stashed away in a shed. Or look on ebay etc, there may be reclaimed tiles listed? Maybe contact local roofer/builder/demolition companies, they may be working on a house with the same tiles that are being removed. I costs nothing to ask...

Tucosalamanca

That's a clay pantile and it looks fairly new. I would be amazed if replacements were unavailable or that difficult to source.

Even if unavailable, there's almost always a solution other than reroofing.

I don't think the roofer wants the work, otherwise they're trying it on.

FreeBear

My roof is over 90 years old. Despite that, can still get tiles for it - Have to go to a building reclamation yard, taking an old one with me to make sure I get a match.

If push came to shove, I'd use a bit of lead nailed to the top batten as a stop gap repair.

Ectophile

Reclamation yards exist for a good reason.  When I had my roof re-laid, the roofer ordered in a pile of second-hand tiles that perfectly matched the existing ones.

King

Thanks for the comments everyone. I have the feeling it's such a small job perhaps he didn't want to go through the bother of sourcing a couple of tiles to replace it with.

I hadn't heard of reclamation yards before so I'll definitely check those out.

With a bit of research I can see the original tiles are Goxhill county.

I've found other Goxhgill county tiles, but they are slightly differently sized with different ridges (I guess for interlocking) etc.

I'll reach out to another roofer today to see if they can help get things sorted, at the moment the roof timber is taking a beating every time it rains.

stuart45

If you lose one of the roof vents, make some checks in that area for condensation.