Felt & Torch-On Roofing · Weston-super-Mare & North Somerset
Felt & Torch-On Roofing In Weston-super-Mare
Does felt still have a place, or is it just the cheap option?
Modern built-up systems, laid in layers, on the jobs where they genuinely make sense
Felt has a reputation problem, and it earned most of it fairly. Anybody in Weston with a garage roof that blistered, split and gave up somewhere around its twelfth birthday is thinking of pour-and-roll felt from the 1970s, and they are right to think badly of it. Modern torch-on is a genuinely different animal - polymer modified, laid in two or three bonded layers, with a mineral cap sheet on top - and a properly built-up system will give you a good fifteen to twenty years without drama. What it will not do is match rubber or fibreglass for lifespan, and anyone telling you otherwise is enjoying the sale a little too much. So we fit it where it fits: outbuildings, garages, sheds, low-value structures, and the jobs where the budget is the budget and pretending otherwise helps nobody.
Free Felt & Torch-On 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 Felt & Torch-On Roofing In Weston-super-Mare?
Layers, not a layer
A proper system is an underlay bonded to the deck and a mineral cap sheet bonded to that, sometimes with a third in between. Single-layer felt is the reason felt has the reputation it has, and it is not what we fit.
It is the honest budget answer
On a detached garage or a workshop at the end of the garden, spending rubber money makes no sense and we will say so. Felt does that job perfectly well for a good many years at a fraction of the outlay.
The mineral cap does real work
The granular surface is not decoration. It takes the UV hit that would otherwise degrade the bitumen underneath, which is exactly the layer that failed on all those 1970s roofs people remember.
Careful with the torch
It is a naked flame on a timber deck. We work to hot works discipline, keep an extinguisher to hand, and stay on afterwards rather than packing up the moment the last sheet is down.
Easy to live with later
Felt takes a patch better than almost anything else, which cuts both ways - it is why so many old roofs are wearing five of them. Used properly it means a genuinely local repair can buy you real time.
Told when not to use it
On anything attached to the house, or anything you walk on, we will steer you to rubber or fibreglass. Felt is a good answer to a narrow question, and we are not going to pretend the question is wider than it is.
"Most of the failed felt we strip off around Weston is single-layer work. Where somebody paid for a proper two or three layer build-up, the roof has usually done its full span and simply reached the end of it rather than failing early."
Based on the felt & torch-on roofing jobs handled by RPS Flat Roofing
How A Felt & Torch-On 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 Felt & Torch-On Roofing Firm
Ask how many layers
This is the question that separates a fifteen year roof from a six year one, and the price difference is far smaller than the lifespan difference. If a quote says only that the roof will be felted, it is not yet a specification. Get the number of layers and the product written down before you compare it against anything else.
Ask what happens about fire
Torching involves an open flame against a timber structure, occasionally right up against your house. There is a recognised way of managing that - proper hot works procedure and a fire watch after the tools are down. Anybody who looks puzzled when you raise it should not be bringing a gas torch to your property.
Ask why felt and not rubber
There are good answers. It is an outbuilding, the budget is fixed, the structure has ten years left in it anyway. There are also bad ones, mainly that it is quick and the margin is comfortable. A roofer who talks you out of felt for an attached extension is probably worth listening to on everything else too.
Proper Built-Up Felt Against The Stuff It Gets Confused With
| Comparison point | Felt & Torch-On Roofing | Old Single-Layer Felt |
|---|---|---|
| What you get | Two or three bonded layers | One layer, nailed or poured |
| Realistic lifespan | 15 to 20 years | 8 to 12, and it shows early |
| The top surface | Mineral cap, takes the UV | Bare bitumen, cooks in the sun |
| Blistering | Rare when it is bonded properly | The classic complaint about felt |
| Cost | Modest, and worth the difference | Cheapest possible, and it acts like it |
| Sensible for | Garages, workshops, outbuildings | Honestly, nothing we would fit now |
Weston Is Drier Than You Think. That Is Not The Problem
People assume a seaside town gets hammered with rain and that this is what finishes off a flat roof. The numbers say otherwise. Weston averages somewhere around 914mm of rain a year, against a UK average closer to 1,163mm - which makes this a noticeably drier place than most of the country, and considerably drier than the parts of the north where flat roofs supposedly have it easy. October is the wettest month at roughly 91mm, and it is not remotely dramatic. So if it is not rainfall, what is taking the roofs off? Two things. The first is wind: the prevailing south-westerly crosses the Bristol Channel and arrives here with nothing at all in its way, and wind does not need to get under much of an edge to start peeling a covering back. The second is salt, which comes in on that same wind and works steadily on every fixing, fastener and trim it can reach. Felt fails at its laps and its edges for exactly this reason, and it is why we spend a disproportionate amount of any felt job on the perimeter rather than the middle. If yours has already started lifting at a corner, the repairs page covers what can be saved.
See what a flat roof costs in WestonWhat Felt & Torch-On Roofing Costs In Weston-super-Mare
Felt remains the cheapest covering per square metre and that is its entire commercial case. A single garage in a proper two-layer torch-on system is usually £900 to £1,700 around Weston. A larger outbuilding or workshop typically £1,400 to £2,600. If somebody has quoted you noticeably less than that, the question to ask is how many layers - because a single-layer job will genuinely be cheaper, and you will be paying for the whole thing again before the decade is out.
See The Full Cost GuideFelt & Torch-On Roofing - Your Questions
Is felt still worth fitting at all?
On the right building, yes. A modern two or three layer torch-on system on a detached garage or a workshop is a sensible piece of value engineering, and it will do fifteen years or so without complaint. On an extension joined to your house, where a failure means your ceiling rather than your lawnmower, we would push you towards rubber every time.
Why did my old felt roof blister?
Moisture caught underneath it. It gets warm, turns to vapour, expands and lifts the felt off the deck in a dome. It is most common on single-layer roofs and on jobs where felt went down over a deck that was already damp - which, given how many of these roofs went on in a hurry in the 1970s, is a great many of them around Worle and Milton.
How long will torch-on last here?
Fifteen to twenty years for a proper built-up system that drains. Knock a few years off if the roof holds water, and knock a few more off if it is fully exposed to the south-westerly - not because of rain, but because wind works at the laps and salt works at the fixings holding the edges down.
Is the torch a fire risk on my garage?
It is a real risk and it deserves respect rather than reassurance. We follow hot works procedure, keep suppression to hand, and stay on site after the last sheet is down to watch for anything smouldering. On an integral garage or anywhere tight against the house, we will often recommend a cold-applied system instead and explain why.
Can you just patch mine?
Frequently, and if a patch is genuinely the right answer that is what you will be offered. One clean split in a covering that is otherwise sound is worth mending. A roof already wearing four previous patches, with soft spots when you walk on it, is telling you something, and spending money on a fifth is just moving the conversation to next winter.
Do I need approval to re-felt?
Only if you cross the threshold - more than a quarter of the roof surface replaced counts as renovating a thermal element and brings the insulation standard with it. A detached garage that is unheated is treated differently to a heated room, which is often good news on exactly the buildings felt suits. North Somerset Council covers Weston and the villages around it; Somerset Council covers Burnham, Highbridge and Cheddar.
While you are here: EPDM Rubber Roofing ·Flat Roof Repairs
Where We Work
Felt & Torch-On 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 Felt & Torch-On 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.