Foam Spray in slate roof. Removal?

Gastines3

Never used it as many bad reports on it's faults. Now aware that No mortgage available on properties with this . However a bungalow I'm considering buying has this. Apart from the obvious of a complete new roof including timberwork, has anyone found any other way of dealing with this stuff? Amazed it wasn't banned years ago.

Cedartree123

We are about to buy a house with foam spray. Many will tell you to run a mile, and they may well be right! But I think it largely depends on how, when and why the foam was installed, and the price / your attitude to risk. It’s probably best to assume the worst, so we got a quote for a new roof and negotiated from there.

You might get lucky, and it has recently been applied (say a couple of years) to a roofing membrane that was in okay condition, and you can remove it without needing a whole new roof. But removing it could lead to rips in the roof membrane.

There are companies out there that specialise in removal of spray foam - I’m not wholly convinced that these aren’t the same cowboys who install it in the first place! Costs apparently in the region of £5-£6k for an average house.  

Worst case scenario - the spray foam was used as a cheap fix for a roof that was failing, and there is no membrane. It will stick all of your tiles together, meaning they need to be hacked off, all your slates will need binned and timbers are likely to need removal. The roofer managed to take a couple of tiles off the roof, so we think we have a chance of just removing the foam, but for an extra £6k a new roof is probably the smarter choice.