Total roof repair

timiny74

Just trying to get an idea of fair cost - 4 bedroom detached house, 1700 sq feet, 2 stories in Buckinghamshire
Monday through Friday 8am to 6pm and contingency for Saturday morning, 5 or 6 workers on site at all times
skip hire for 1.5 weeks (Sunday to Tuesday of following week)
scaffolding around entire hours for 1.5 weeks (Sunday to Tuesday of following week)
Boards, timbers/rafters twisted and water damaged, felt completely perished, battens replaced
all tiles cleaned of moss or replaced, chimney repointed and new timbers where needed.
Fit new dry ridge system, hip tiles, drop trays, verges, lead flashings
All wooden soffits and fascias and guttering replaced for entire house on both stories with black deep flow guttering and all black plastic soffits and fascias

Should this be less than £20-25k or more based on the above work?  Just trying to get an idea, thanks.

Wyndham

Had a new roof last year. 4 bed detached bungalow, but I think a similar footprint to yours (which must be a huge house?) Total cost £27K and took about a month from the scaffolding going up to it coming down again. They were on site from about 8 (ish) to 4 (ish) Monday to Friday, and did one Saturday morning.

I think your cost is about right - but more at the top end of it. I'm more concerned about your timings which I think are ambitious.

We got 3 quotes, all in the same kind of ballpark. We also got the work guaranteed - the previous roof wasn't very old and wasn't a good job, which we've ended up paying for!

timiny74

Thanks Wyndham.  Actually, we just had the work done last week but part of the reason for posting is all 3 quotes I got quoted for just soffits, fascias and gutters and clearing a whole heap of moss and replacing broken tiles from the roof, but all 3 didn't point out or notice that basically everything underneath was in bad shape.  We went with one of them and they found that the felt, battons and much of the timbers needed replacing and chimney repointing.  They also had to hire in more scaffolding.  The skip and scaffolding arrived a week ago Sunday and skip was picked up today - this Monday, scaffolding removal is Wednesday.  Like I said they had 5 or 6 guys on site all the time working on it for the entire week.  I don't think the house is particularly huge at 1700 square feet, there are certainly many houses in the area well in excess of 2000 square feet although there are a lot of smaller houses.  We had a 3 bedroom terraced house before and it was close to 1000 square feet. But yeah they did all of the work in the week finishing Saturday morning.  I was more annoyed about not knowing the cost upfront but essentially a lot more work had to be done and was £29k in the end.
Reading online I was hearing things like entire roof replacement for £10-12k or even less and I was wondering if I'd totally been taken but it's good to hear that your bungalow that is a little smaller was only £2k less so I feel better that maybe I didn't completely get taken for a ride!  I was pleased with the company in terms of excellent communication and the guys on site seemed to be very hard working, maybe with 6 of them it was done faster?  I was really surprised to read it took a whole month to get yours done.  A neighbour across the street had a new roof recently and it was definitely done in under 2 weeks, if I recall.
Thanks!

Wyndham

Hang on - it wasn't a new roof (all new tiles?) just a repair? We had new tiles.

timiny74

Well every tile on the house had to be removed, each scrubbed clean of moss, any tiles that broke replaced and all of them fitted back on.  All of the other work wasn't meant to happen but when they started looking under the tiles they noticed loads of twisted timbers, water damage throughout the entire under roof.  Beyond a few broken tiles they were all perfectly good so there wasn't a need to put on new tiles.

FreeBear

So you had the whole roof stripped - Did you get a Building Regs completion certificate for the work ?

Some roofers can self certify, the rest need to go through Building Control to get it signed off.

timiny74

Actually, it wasn't stripped, there were just a number of wood beams twisted and water damage, they were shored up with new timbers in place alongside so new timbers and all the felt replaced along with everything else.

ian1246

I moved into my 1970's build house December 01st. By End of January noticed water ingress - due to the shallow angle of the pitched roof there was insufficient overlap, leading to water ingress through the tiles I'm the wind - the felt had held it back for most of the houses life, but after 50years it started to fail, hence the leaks.

Roofer stripped the tiles & felt and batons, replaced with new felt and reused the existing tiles, increasing the overlap & therefore also had a decent chunk of new tiles - cost £6250 including Scaffolding.

The footprint of the part of the house with the pitched roof is roughly 6.6metres by 6 metres - so 39.6 square metres, so roughly 426 square feet.

Granted - the structural timbers were sound, so it was just the felt & battens which ultimately were replaced - plus a bunch of new tiles.

timiny74

ian1246 said:

I moved into my 1970's build house December 01st. By End of January noticed water ingress - due to the shallow angle of the pitched roof there was insufficient overlap, leading to water ingress through the tiles I'm the wind - the felt had held it back for most of the houses life, but after 50years it started to fail, hence the leaks.

Roofer stripped the tiles & felt and batons, replaced with new felt and reused the existing tiles, increasing the overlap & therefore also had a decent chunk of new tiles - cost £6250 including Scaffolding.

The footprint of the part of the house with the pitched roof is roughly 6.6metres by 6 metres - so 39.6 square metres, so roughly 426 square feet.

Granted - the structural timbers were sound, so it was just the felt & battens which ultimately were replaced - plus a bunch of new tiles.

Thanks, how long ago was this?  I'm not sure if materials have gone up a lot in recent years?  I seem to recall some things after the pandemic went through the roof (no pun intended!) in cost.  Also, we had the chimney repointed on both stories, black soffits, fascias, deep flow gutters with gutter guards replaced throughout the entire roof.  I'd have to check the roof size, how do you go about measuring it without actually getting up there with tape measure?  Would a measurement of the ground floor of the house give an approximate roof size?

timiny74

did you have to have many new timbers installed along the rafters?  Many of the existing ones were damaged and if left too much longer would be a support issue I think so there was a lot of timbers that needed to be added, I'm not exactly sure how many but I suspect they are not cheap supplies and installation.

Albermarle

Had a new roof last year. 4 bed detached bungalow, but I think a similar footprint to yours (which must be a huge house?

 I don't think the house is particularly huge at 1700 square feet,

There is a misunderstanding in that when the OP said 1700 sqft, they meant the whole floor space of the house, not the footprint.

Thanks, how long ago was this?  I'm not sure if materials have gone up a lot in recent years?  I seem to recall some things after the pandemic went through the roof (no pun intended!) in cost. 

During lockdown and people being at home 24/7 there was a huge rise in DIY work, followed by huge demand on builders, & tradespeople as they were allowed back into your home.

As global demand for raw materials like concrete, bricks, steel, plastic etc accelerated, there were also numerous supply chain blockages. The result was rocketing prices for these materials.

Also due to Covid and Brexit a large number of East European tradespeople went home and did not return. So labour costs also shot up ( if you could find anybody).

Although things have calmed down a bit, and there are regional variations,  you can probably say that the cost of a new roof, extension etc is probably nearly double what it was 5 years ago.