About 20 minutes from Weston · Somerset area
Flat Roofing In Cheddar
Does your Cheddar flat roof crack in the cold rather than leak in the rain?
Flat roofing for the coldest corner of our patch, where frost does the damage
Cheddar sits directly under the Mendip scarp, and the hill that made the village famous also sets its weather. Sheltered from the sea wind but denied the coast's mildness, Cheddar runs colder than Weston through every winter month - and cold, for flat roofs, means freeze-thaw. Water that lingers in a lap, a hairline crack or a shallow puddle freezes overnight, expands as physics insists, and levers the gap wider before melting away innocently by morning. A covering can lose a decade of life to a few hard winters of that treatment. Our Cheddar specification is built around denying frost its foothold: confident falls, dry details, and coverings chosen for how gracefully they handle the cold.
Get A Free Flat Roof Quote In Cheddar
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 Cheddar
The village itself layers eight centuries of building - stone cottages around the gorge approach and the market cross, Victorian villas from the first tourism boom, and postwar growth spreading toward the levels, complete with the era's standard flat-roofed extensions and garages. Much of the older core sits under a conservation area, and a good part of the parish lies within the Mendip Hills National Landscape, where materials and finishes on visible work attract genuine scrutiny. Planning and building control both belong to Somerset Council - Cheddar is well south of the North Somerset line, a fact that surprises Weston tradesmen roughly weekly.
The countryside around adds a working dimension. The strawberry fields, dairy land and growing operations that ring Cheddar carry a substantial stock of agricultural and horticultural buildings - packing sheds, stores, barns with flat or near-flat roofs - which need weathertightness on a budget and rarely need beauty. That is honest felt-and-membrane territory, priced for what the building does rather than what it looks like, and we do a steady trade in it alongside the village's domestic work. The common thread everywhere is the frost-first mindset: whatever the building, water must leave the roof fast and completely, because whatever stays will freeze.
Planning in Cheddar: Cheddar is Somerset Council, and much of the parish sits within the Mendip Hills National Landscape. Between that and the conservation area around the gorge approach, material choices get looked at properly. Planning and building control for Cheddar sit with 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 Cheddar
Warm Roof Upgrades
Cheddar's cold makes the warm-roof case for us - insulation above the deck warms the room and takes the frost stress off the structure.
Read more about Warm Roof Upgrades in Cheddar
Felt & Torch-On Roofing
For the packing sheds and stores around the village, a proper two-layer felt system delivers dry storage at farm-budget prices.
Read more about Felt & Torch-On Roofing in Cheddar
Flat Roof Repairs
Freeze-thaw splits announce themselves in spring. Caught early, they are precise, inexpensive repairs rather than autumn re-roofs.
Read more about Flat Roof Repairs in CheddarFrost-First Roofing Under The Scarp
Twenty minutes inland buys a different climate. These are the adjustments Cheddar's winters have taught us to make.
Falls built with conviction
Standing water is merely tiresome on the coast; here it is a nightly ice event all winter. Cheddar roofs get falls rebuilt properly at renewal, because a puddle at this altitude is a crowbar with patience.
Coverings picked for cold
Rubber stays flexible in frost where aged rigid coverings crack, which shapes our recommendations here. Where fibreglass is right for other reasons, the deck and details are engineered so the cold has nothing to work on.
Designations navigated correctly
Conservation area in the core, National Landscape across much of the parish, Somerset Council holding the forms - we check the position for each roof before quoting so nothing stalls mid-job.
Farm buildings priced as farm buildings
Agricultural stores need dry, tough and affordable, not architectural. We quote them accordingly and schedule around the growing calendar rather than our own convenience.
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
"Spring is our Cheddar season - the first warm fortnight reveals every split the winter's freeze-thaw opened, and the calls arrive in a cluster. The owners who book an autumn check instead get the same faults found at repair prices rather than replacement ones."
Based on the enquiries handled by RPS Flat Roofing
How A Cheddar Job Runs
The same eight stages on every roof we take on, whether it is about 20 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 Cheddar 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 Cheddar
Cheddar Gorge
Britain's biggest gorge needs little introduction - 400-foot limestone cliffs above the road, a clifftop circuit walk for those with the legs, and feral goats supervising the traffic below. The village at the bottom has been welcoming the awestruck for two centuries.
Learn more about Cheddar Gorge
Gough's Cave
The showcave that runs almost three and a half kilometres into the hill, past chambers of stalactites and the site where Britain's oldest complete skeleton - Cheddar Man - lay for nine thousand years. The underground river beneath it is the largest in Britain.
Learn more about Gough's Cave
Cheddar Reservoir
The great 1930s circle of water below the village, fed from the gorge's own river and ringed by a flat walking circuit with the whole Mendip scarp for a backdrop - sailing and birdlife on the water, and the village's favourite evening lap around it.
Learn more about Cheddar ReservoirWhere We Work In Cheddar
Cheddar is about 20 minutes from Weston, which puts every street on this map inside our normal survey run - including Cheddar Gorge, Bath Street, Station Road 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 Cheddar
Cheddar's domestic work prices on the standard ranges - garages £1,400 to £2,600 in rubber, extensions £2,200 to £4,000 - with falls-rebuilding more often part of the job here, itemised so you can see what the frost-proofing costs. Agricultural and horticultural buildings price by area and purpose, usually in proper two-layer felt or membrane from around £900 for a small store upward. The twenty-minute run from Weston is inside our standard radius; surveys are free on both sides of the hill.
See The Full Cost GuideFlat Roofing In Cheddar - Your Questions
Why do flat roofs fail faster in Cheddar than on the coast?
Frost, doing quiet piecework all winter. Cheddar's inland position under the scarp means many more freezing nights than Weston sees, and each one turns any lingering water into an expanding wedge in whatever gap it occupies. The cure is not a magic membrane - it is a roof that drains completely and details that stay dry, which is exactly how we specify here.
Who handles planning and building control for Cheddar?
Somerset Council on both counts - Cheddar sits well inside their area, nowhere near North Somerset's boundary. Add the conservation area over the village core and the Mendip Hills National Landscape over much of the parish, and visible roof work here carries more checking than most places. We do that checking before quoting, as standard and without charge.
Do you roof farm and growing buildings around Cheddar?
Regularly - stores, packing sheds and barns are a steady part of our Cheddar diary. They get honest agricultural specification: hard-wearing two-layer felt or membrane, priced for the building's job rather than its looks, and scheduled around harvest and planting rather than against them. Batching several buildings in one visit brings the per-roof cost down usefully.
When is the best time to check a Cheddar roof?
Autumn, without question. A pre-winter survey finds the hairline faults that January's freeze-thaw would otherwise spend three months enlarging, and fixes them at repair prices. Spring is when we meet the roofs that skipped that appointment - same faults, bigger, and now with a wet ceiling attached.
Areas We Cover Around Cheddar
Get A Cheddar Roof Winter-Ready
Village extension, garage or a yard full of farm buildings - one of us will survey it free, check the designation position where it matters, and quote a roof built to shrug off the scarp's winters. Book the autumn visit; skip the spring surprise.