EPDM Rubber Roofing · Weston-super-Mare & North Somerset
EPDM Rubber Roofing In Weston-super-Mare
Fed up of patching the same extension roof every couple of years?
One-piece rubber membranes with no field joins for the weather to pick at
EPDM is a sheet of synthetic rubber, and on most domestic roofs in Weston it arrives as a single piece cut to your roof and bonded down in one go. That one detail is the whole argument for it. A covering with no joins across the open part of the roof has removed the thing that fails first. Everything else about rubber - that it flexes rather than cracks, that it does not go brittle when the sun finally comes out in July, that it shrugs off the salt in the air here - is a bonus on top of the fact that there is simply less of it to go wrong. It is not glamorous. Nobody has ever stood in a garden and admired a rubber roof. It just sits there for decades being unremarkable, which is precisely what you want from something whose only job is keeping the weather on the correct side of your ceiling.
Free EPDM Rubber Roofing Quote
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.
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
Why Use Us For EPDM Rubber Roofing In Weston-super-Mare?
No joins where it matters
On a typical extension or garage the sheet comes as one piece. There is nothing to lap, nothing to weld across the field, and therefore nothing sitting there waiting for its fifteenth winter to give way.
It moves, and your roof moves
Timber decks expand and contract all year. Rubber stretches with them and returns. Rigid coverings do that a few thousand times and then crack, usually somewhere you cannot see until the ceiling tells you.
Salt does not touch it
Weston sits fully open to the Bristol Channel and the wind arrives loaded with salt. That eats fixings, trims and fasteners over time. The rubber itself is entirely indifferent to it, so we spend our attention on the metalwork instead.
Fitted cold, which matters more than you think
No torch, no open flame, no gas bottle on your roof next to a timber deck and whatever is stored in the garage below it. On an attached extension that is a genuine safety difference rather than a marketing line.
The falls get built, not assumed
Rubber copes with the odd shallow puddle better than most coverings, which is not the same as it being fine with them. If the deck has dropped we put a slope back with firrings or tapered boards first.
Repairable in twenty years
Should something ever get dropped on it or a lantern get changed, new membrane bonds to old perfectly well. You are not committing yourself to stripping the entire roof over one puncture.
"When we take an old covering off an extension around Weston, the split is almost never in the middle of the roof. It is at a join, an upstand or an outlet - which is exactly why we push people towards a membrane that has no middle joins at all."
Based on the epdm rubber roofing jobs handled by RPS Flat Roofing
How A EPDM Rubber Roofing Job Runs
Tell Us What It Is Doing
Where the mark is, when it started, and whether it gets worse in wind or only in long rain. Those two behave differently and it narrows things down before anybody fetches a ladder.
Somebody Stands On It
One of us comes out, gets up there, and walks the whole roof rather than the corner you pointed at. Free, and with no expectation it turns into work.
A Look Underneath As Well
Where there is a ceiling void or a loft hatch, we look at the deck from below too. Half of what matters on a flat roof is invisible from the top.
The Diagnosis, Then The Price
You get told what has failed and why, in words you could repeat to somebody else, before any number is mentioned. Photos where they make it clearer.
A Quote You Can Take Apart
Deck, insulation, membrane, trims and access all listed separately. If you only want part of it done, you can see exactly what that part costs.
Strip Back To Sound Timber
The old covering comes off and the deck gets checked properly. Anything soft comes out. Laying a new membrane over damp boards is how a ten year roof becomes a three year roof.
Falls Before Finish
If the water has nowhere to go, it is going to sit there whatever we cover it with. Firrings or tapered insulation put a proper slope back before the membrane goes anywhere near it.
Water On It Before We Leave
Outlets tested, edges and upstands checked, everything swept up, photographs sent over and the written guarantee handed to you on the day.
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
What To Look For In A EPDM Rubber Roofing Firm
Ask what happens at the edges
Almost every rubber roof that fails early fails at a perimeter trim, a wall upstand or around an outlet, and never in the open field. If somebody quotes you enthusiastically on the membrane and gets vague about the trims and the corners, they have told you which part of the job they find boring.
Ask whether the deck is coming off
Laying new rubber straight over a tired old covering is quick, cheap and popular. It also seals damp timber underneath it with nowhere to dry to. Anybody unwilling to lift the old stuff and look at the boards is quoting for the bit of the job you can see.
Ask who the guarantee is from
Manufacturers offer long, impressive warranties on the sheet itself, and firms love quoting those numbers. The sheet is not what fails. Ask separately what the workmanship guarantee is, how long it runs, and whether you get it on paper.
Rubber Against The Felt It Usually Replaces
| Comparison point | EPDM Rubber Roofing | Built-Up Felt |
|---|---|---|
| Sensible working life | Commonly quoted at 30 years plus | Modern torch-on, realistically 15 to 20 |
| Joins across the roof | None on most domestic sizes | Lapped and bonded right across it |
| How it is fitted | Cold applied, adhesive, no flame | Gas torch, on your timber deck |
| Reaction to sun and frost | Stays flexible either way | Hardens with age, then splits |
| Day-one cost | Noticeably more | The cheapest thing per square metre |
| Where it earns its keep | Extensions, garages, dormers, porches | Sheds, stores and short-term budgets |
The Bit Everyone Forgets Is The Metal
Here is something we notice constantly around Uphill, the seafront and out at Locking, and almost never twenty miles inland. The rubber is fine. The rubber is always fine. What has given up is the aluminium trim at the edge, the fixings holding it, or the fasteners on the outlet - because the air coming off the Channel carries salt, and salt is far more interested in metal than it is in polymer. You get a roof where the covering has years left in it and the perimeter is quietly corroding away, and since water only ever leaves a flat roof at its edges, that is precisely the wrong place to have a problem. So on coastal jobs we specify the trims and fasteners for the environment rather than for the invoice, which costs a little more and is the difference between a roof that lasts its full span and one that starts letting go at the corners in year twelve. If your existing covering is felt rather than rubber, the felt and torch-on page explains when replacing like with like still makes sense.
See what a flat roof costs in WestonWhat EPDM Rubber Roofing Costs In Weston-super-Mare
A single garage in rubber around Weston usually lands somewhere between £1,400 and £2,600. A decent-sized rear extension is more often £2,200 to £4,000. What moves the number is rarely the membrane itself, which is a modest slice of the total - it is how much soft decking comes out, whether a proper fall has to be rebuilt, and how many upstands, outlets and awkward corners the roof has. Deck repairs and insulation appear as their own lines on the quote so you can see what you are paying for timber and what you are paying for rubber.
See The Full Cost GuideEPDM Rubber Roofing - Your Questions
How long will an EPDM roof actually last in Weston?
The industry figure is 30 years and up, and that is realistic on a roof that drains properly. Being near the sea does not shorten the life of the rubber at all - it shortens the life of the metal trims and fixings around it, which is a different problem and one we specify around. The thing that genuinely halves the number is standing water, and that comes down to whether somebody built a fall in.
Is rubber worth the extra over felt?
On anything attached to your house, yes, and it is not close. You pay somewhere around a third to a half more on the day, for a covering with no field joins that should see out at least one full felt lifetime and probably closer to two. On a shed at the bottom of the garden, felt is the sensible answer and we will tell you so.
Can it go straight over my existing flat roof?
Physically yes. We usually will not. The old covering is hiding the deck, and around here the deck is often the actual problem - chipboard that has been quietly wet for years does not announce itself until somebody puts a knee through it. Overlaying also traps that moisture with nowhere to go, and you have then paid for a long-life covering sitting on short-life timber.
Will it look like a rubber roof?
It looks like a flat matt black surface, which is what most people expect a flat roof to look like. From the ground you generally cannot see it at all. If the roof is genuinely on show - a garden room, something overlooked by an upstairs window - it is worth talking about, and fibreglass or a trimmed detail can be tidier to look at.
Do I need building regulations approval?
If you are replacing more than a quarter of the roof's surface it counts as renovating a thermal element, and the roof then has to meet current insulation standards - 0.18 W/m2K on a re-roof where that is feasible. For Weston, Worle, Uphill, Hutton and Locking that is North Somerset Council. If you are down in Burnham-on-Sea, Highbridge or Cheddar it is Somerset Council instead, which trips people up regularly. A genuine patch repair is maintenance and needs nothing.
How long are you on site?
A straightforward garage is usually a single day. An extension with a couple of upstands and a lantern to work around is more often two. If the deck has to come off and go back on, add a day. We would rather give you three honest days than promise one and leave your roof open overnight, which on this coast is a genuinely bad idea in anything but settled weather.
While you are here: GRP Fibreglass Roofing ·Warm Roof Upgrades ·Flat Roof Repairs
Where We Work
EPDM Rubber Roofing across Weston-super-Mare and out through North Somerset - Worle and Milton, the village cores at Uphill, Hutton and Bleadon, the new streets at Locking Parklands, and down onto the levels towards Highbridge and Burnham.
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.
Get A Price For EPDM Rubber Roofing
Ring and describe what it is doing, or send a message and one of us will come and stand on it. Surveys are free, the number we write down is the number you pay, and if the honest answer is that your roof has another five winters in it, that is what you will be told.