About 50 minutes from Weston · Bath & North East Somerset area
Flat Roofing In Bath
Water finding its way through a Bath parapet roof?
Flat roofing for a city whose finest roofs are the ones you cannot see
Bath is the great secret of the flat-roofing trade. Stand in front of a Georgian terrace and you see pitched slate - but walk the skyline and you find what the parapets hide: valley flats, box gutters, lead flats and butterfly roofs, an entire concealed drainage landscape that the eighteenth century built and the twenty-first still depends on. When a Bath ceiling stains, the culprit is almost always up there, behind the stone. That concealed world is proper flat-roofing work of the most exacting kind, and it comes wrapped in the strictest planning context we operate in: a UNESCO World Heritage city, mostly inside one vast conservation area, under Bath & North East Somerset Council - a third authority with its own ways, and not one to guess at.
Get A Free Flat Roof Quote In Bath
Four boxes and one of us will come and stand on it. Surveys are free, we do not do the three-hour kitchen-table sales pitch, and if your roof has another eight years in it we would rather tell you that than sell you one you do not need.
About Bath
The Georgian system is worth understanding, because it explains most Bath leaks. The terraces were designed so that roofs drain inward and backward, out of sight - rainwater runs off pitched slopes into parapet and valley gutters, along lead-lined channels, through internal outlets and down concealed pipes. Every drop the sky delivers negotiates a sequence of two-century-old details before it reaches the ground. When one link fails - a fatigued lead joint, a blocked internal outlet, a mortar fillet gone soft - the water does not announce itself at the eaves like an honest leak; it appears three rooms away at the top of somebody's stairwell. Diagnosing that path is the craft, and mending it in kind is the obligation.
The obligation is formal here, not just aesthetic. Bath has been a World Heritage Site since 1987, most of the city lies within its conservation area, and listed status is the rule rather than the exception on the terraces - so consent questions come first, materials are matched rather than substituted, and anything visible from anywhere is treated as the planners' business. Bath & North East Somerset Council administers all of it, and they are a separate world from both Somerset and North Somerset. The city's other half - Victorian Oldfield Park, postwar Twerton and Odd Down - plays by ordinary rules, with ordinary extensions and garages, and honestly comes as light relief.
Planning in Bath: Bath is a third authority again - Bath & North East Somerset Council, not Somerset or North Somerset. The city has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1987 and most of it sits inside a single vast conservation area, so visible roof work is checked properly and listed-building consent is a routine part of working here. Planning and building control for Bath sit with Bath & North East Somerset Council.
1,000+
Flat roofs laid, patched or rescued
Houses & Units
Domestic and commercial, same crew
Written Down
Guarantee on paper before we start
Nothing
What it costs to get us on your roof
Flat Roofing Services In Bath
Flat Roof Repairs
Most Bath calls end at one failed detail in the hidden drainage - found by tracing the water, mended in matching materials.
Read more about Flat Roof Repairs in Bath
GRP Fibreglass Roofing
Where consent allows, a laminate lining renews a failing box gutter or terrace deck without disturbing what surrounds it.
Read more about GRP Fibreglass Roofing in Bath
Warm Roof Upgrades
On the city's ordinary extensions - and its draughty rear additions - renewal is the moment to add the insulation Georgian builders never imagined.
Read more about Warm Roof Upgrades in BathWorking Behind Bath's Parapets
A World Heritage city sets its own terms. These are the ones we work to in Bath.
The water traced, not guessed
Concealed drainage means the stain and the fault can be rooms apart. We follow the Georgian system - gutter, channel, outlet, pipe - until we find the actual break, because mending the wrong detail in Bath is expensive theatre.
Consent handled before tools
Listed buildings and the conservation area make permission a first-class question. We establish the position with Bath & North East Somerset Council up front and put it in writing with the quote.
Materials matched in kind
Lead for lead, like for like, substitutions only where consent and good practice both allow. A repair that jars against two-hundred-year-old work is a failure even when it holds water.
The modern city served simply
Twerton, Odd Down and Oldfield Park get the ordinary service - surveys, fixed prices, rubber and felt where they belong - without the heritage ceremony their streets do not need.
What Our Guarantee Actually Covers
Every flat roof in Weston is guaranteed by somebody. Read the small print and you usually find the promise is from the company that made the rubber, not the company that stuck it down. That distinction matters, because membranes almost never fail. Installations do. A sheet of EPDM will happily outlive all of us sitting in a warehouse. It fails at the upstand where somebody rushed the corner.
So RPS Flat Roofing splits the two and tells you both. The materials carry whatever the manufacturer offers, which depends on the product going on your roof - and you are told which product that is, by name, before you agree to anything. Separately, the workmanship carries our own written guarantee, handed over on the day, in language you could read out to a neighbour.
The reason we are relaxed about putting that in writing is that most of the flat roof failures we get called to were decided before the covering went on. Water was never given anywhere to go, or the old deck was left in place because lifting it would have shown up something awkward. Get the falls and the deck right and the covering is the easy part. Get them wrong and no warranty document in the world keeps your ceiling dry.
In Writing
Our Workmanship
Named Product
Maker's Own Cover
Covered
Public Liability
1,000+
Flat Roofs Done
"Our Bath enquiries are the oldest roofs we ever stand on, and the pattern never varies: the Georgian structure is fine, the slate is fine, and one lead detail in the concealed drainage has finally, after two centuries, asked for attention."
Based on the enquiries handled by RPS Flat Roofing
How A Bath Job Runs
The same eight stages on every roof we take on, whether it is about 50 minutes from Weston or at the end of our own street. Diagnosis and a fixed figure always come before any spend.
Describe The Roof
Tell us what it is doing and where in Bath it lives. Symptoms plus postcode is enough to get the right person and the right kit on the first visit.
A Free Survey On Foot
Charlie, Ricky or James walks the whole roof - field, edges, upstands and outlets - because faults rarely sit where the stain suggests.
The Deck Gets Judged
We check the timber from above and, where there is access, from below. What the boards are doing decides the job more than the covering does.
You Hear The Verdict First
Repair or renew, and why, in plain words - before any number appears. If a small fix is the honest answer, that is the one you get.
An Itemised Fixed Price
Deck, falls, insulation, covering, trims and access on separate lines. The figure is fixed in writing and does not drift once work starts.
Strip, Then Rebuild The Falls
Old coverings come off rather than getting buried, soft timber comes out, and a real slope goes back in so water leaves instead of lodging.
Covering Fitted To Specification
Membrane, laminate or felt system installed with the fixings and edge details matched to the exposure the roof actually faces.
Proof Before Payment
Outlets tested, site cleared, photographs of what you cannot see from the ground, and the guarantee in your hand on completion day.
What To Do In Bath
The Roman Baths
The great thermal spring complex the Romans built and the city is named for - two thousand years of continuous history around water that still rises hot from the ground, and one of the finest ancient sites in northern Europe.
Learn more about The Roman Baths
The Royal Crescent
Thirty Grade I listed houses in one unbroken Palladian sweep above Royal Victoria Park - the most famous terrace in Britain, and the purest expression of the Georgian city spread out below it.
Learn more about The Royal Crescent
Bath Skyline Walk
The National Trust's six-mile circuit through the meadows and woods above the city - the view that explains the World Heritage listing better than any plaque, and a proper walk rather than a stroll.
Learn more about Bath Skyline WalkWhere We Work In Bath
Bath is about 50 minutes from Weston, which puts every street on this map inside our normal survey run - including Oldfield Park, Twerton, Odd Down and everywhere between.
What People Say Afterwards
Flat roofing is a trade people only think about when something has gone wrong, so the bar is low and the horror stories are plentiful. Here is what customers around Weston and the levels have said about getting it done properly.
Two firms had already patched the same corner of our extension roof and both times it came back by Christmas. Ricky got up there, came down, and said the problem was that the water had nowhere to go - the whole thing sat in a dip. They rebuilt the falls and put rubber over it. Third winter now, still dry, and I have stopped keeping a bucket in the airing cupboard.
Ours is a bungalow near the old village so it is nearly all flat roof, and the salt off the Channel had eaten the edge trims to nothing. Quoted properly, itemised, and the price at the end was the price on the paper. They also spotted that the outlet had been fitted higher than the deck by whoever did it in the eighties, which explained a great deal.
New-ish house, flat canopy section over the front, leaking at one corner. I was braced for being told the whole lot needed replacing. James looked at it and said it was a single lap that had never been properly welded, charged me a fraction of what I had budgeted, and was gone by lunchtime. Genuinely refreshing.
We wanted the garage roof done and were dreading the whole business. Charlie turned up when he said he would, explained the difference between the warm and cold deck options without making us feel thick, and let us take a week to think about it with no chasing phone calls. The crew swept up so thoroughly you could not tell they had been.
We run a unit and the roof had been leaking over the racking for the best part of a year. They worked around us, did the noisy part on a Saturday so we never lost a day's trading, and the report they sent afterwards was detailed enough that our insurer accepted it without a single follow-up question. Cannot ask for much more than that.
I had put off dealing with the dormer for years because every quote I got was for the entire roof. RPS were the only ones who separated out what actually needed doing from what would be nice to do eventually. They did the dormer, told me the main covering had a good few years left, and did not once try to talk me into the bigger job.
Flat Roof Prices In Bath
Bath work is priced in two registers. The modern city follows the standard ranges - garages £1,400 to £2,600, extensions £2,200 to £4,000, repairs from £200 with the fifty-minute run absorbed into planned visits. Heritage work is priced per job after diagnosis, because a box-gutter renewal in matching lead on a Grade I terrace is craftwork with consent attached - typically £1,500 to £6,000 depending on extent and access, always itemised, and always preceded by the tracing survey that finds the actual fault before anyone pays to fix a guess.
See The Full Cost GuideFlat Roofing In Bath - Your Questions
Which council covers Bath, and does it change anything?
Bath & North East Somerset Council - not Somerset, not North Somerset, and the distinction matters more here than anywhere on our patch. B&NES administers a World Heritage city where most streets sit inside the conservation area and listed status is routine, so consent questions are part of ordinary roofing life. We establish your building's position with them before quoting, as standard.
Why is my ceiling staining nowhere near the roof edge?
Because Georgian Bath drains inward. Your terrace's rainwater runs through concealed parapet gutters, valley channels and internal outlets before it ever reaches a downpipe, and a failure anywhere along that hidden route surfaces wherever the water finds a ceiling - often rooms away from the fault. It is the signature Bath leak, and tracing the route properly is the difference between one repair and three.
Do I need listed building consent to repair a roof you cannot even see?
Possibly - on a listed building, consent attaches to alterations wherever they sit, visible or not, though genuine like-for-like repair is generally the least burdened case. The practical answer is that we ask B&NES the question before starting rather than after, and in-kind repair with matching materials is usually both the compliant route and the best one for the building anyway.
Do you cover the ordinary parts of Bath too?
Happily - Oldfield Park's Victorian terraces, Twerton and Odd Down's postwar streets and the city's estate housing carry the same extensions and garages as anywhere, with none of the ceremony. Standard surveys, standard ranges, rubber and felt where they belong. Bath is about fifty minutes from base, so everything runs on planned visits, booked ahead.
Areas We Cover Around Bath
Get A Bath Roof Diagnosed Before It Redecorates A Ceiling
Parapet gutter, lead flat or plain Twerton garage - one of us will trace the fault properly, answer the consent question in writing, and price the fix at a fixed figure. The survey costs nothing, and in this city the diagnosis is worth more than the repair.