Flat Roof Repairs · Weston-super-Mare & North Somerset
Flat Roof Repairs In Weston-super-Mare
Has something started coming through the ceiling again?
We work out why it is leaking before deciding what it needs, which is not the same thing
There are two honest answers to a leaking flat roof and most people only ever get offered one of them. Sometimes a roof has one identifiable fault - a split at an upstand, a lifted lap, an outlet packed with moss - and mending that fault buys you the rest of the covering's natural life for a couple of hundred pounds. Sometimes the covering has simply finished, and every pound spent patching it is rent rather than purchase. The useful thing a roofer can do is tell you which of those you have, plainly, on the day, before any money changes hands. That is most of what this page is about. We do repairs, we do quite a lot of them, and we would rather do a two hundred pound job well than talk somebody into a three thousand pound one they did not need.
Free Flat Roof Repairs 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 Flat Roof Repairs In Weston-super-Mare?
We look at the whole roof
You point at the corner above the damp patch. We walk the lot, because on a flat roof water frequently gets in a long way from where it appears and follows the deck until it finds a joint to drop through.
The outlet gets checked first
It is unglamorous and it is the answer surprisingly often. A blocked outlet turns your roof into a shallow tank, and everything after that - the seams, the upstands, the ceiling - is a symptom rather than the disease.
Edges, upstands and abutments
Almost nothing fails in the open middle of a flat roof. It fails where the covering turns up a wall, meets a door threshold, passes a pipe or runs out to a trim. That is where the search starts and usually where it ends.
An honest verdict on patching
If the covering has years left and one detail has gone, you get a repair. If it is on its fourth patch and spongy underfoot, you get told, and shown, rather than sold a fifth one.
Wind damage understood
A lifted edge on an exposed Weston roof is not cosmetic. Once the wind has a way underneath a covering it will keep working at it, and a corner that has started to peel after a gale wants dealing with before the next one.
The number does not move
What we write down is what you pay. If lifting the covering shows up something nobody could have known about, work stops and you get shown it before anything else happens.
"Roughly speaking, for every three flat roof leaks we go out to around Weston, two turn out to be genuinely worth repairing and one has reached the end. The number people expect before we arrive is far more pessimistic than that."
Based on the flat roof repairs jobs handled by RPS Flat Roofing
How A Flat Roof Repairs 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 Flat Roof Repairs Firm
Did anyone look at it after rain?
The single most useful thing anybody can do on a flat roof is walk it the day after a downpour and note where water is still lying. It tells you where the falls have failed, where the outlet is not coping, and where the next leak is coming from. A quote produced in dry weather without that having ever happened is a price, not a diagnosis.
Can they tell you what broke?
By the time we leave you should be able to explain to somebody else what went wrong - a lap that has lifted, an upstand that has come away from the wall, a rotten section of deck. If the whole explanation is that it needed sealing, then nothing has been diagnosed and you are buying a tube of something and some optimism.
Were you offered a repair at all?
Some outfits do not really do repairs, because a full replacement is a far better day's work. If every quote you get is for the whole roof regardless of what is actually wrong, get one more opinion from somebody who is willing to say the words two hundred pounds out loud.
Repairing It Against Replacing It
| Comparison point | Flat Roof Repairs | Full Re-Cover |
|---|---|---|
| What you spend | £180 to £600 for a single fault | £1,400 to £4,000 on a typical domestic roof |
| Time on site | Two hours to half a day | One to three days |
| The right call when | One detail has failed, the rest is sound | Multiple patches, soft deck, water everywhere |
| What you get | Whatever life the covering had left | A fresh 20 to 30 years, done properly |
| Insulation | Unchanged, it is a maintenance job | Has to meet current standards |
| Building control | Not involved | Involved once you pass 25 per cent |
The Puddle Is Not The Damage. It Is The Cause
Water still lying on your roof two days after the rain stopped is not an aesthetic complaint, it is a countdown. It leans on every lap and joint underneath it until one of them gives. It collects silt and grows a mat of moss that keeps the whole area permanently wet and eventually blocks the outlet, which makes the puddle bigger, which makes everything worse - a pleasingly self-reinforcing little system. And on the colder inland edge of our patch, up around Winscombe and under the Mendips at Cheddar, it freezes overnight and expands, working the joint open a fraction more each time. None of that is fixed with sealant. All of it is fixed by making the water leave, which is why the first thing we look at is where the roof was supposed to be draining to and why it has stopped. Sometimes the answer is a five minute clear of an outlet. Sometimes the deck has dropped and the fall needs rebuilding, in which case you are into reconstructing the roof build-up rather than mending a covering.
See what a flat roof costs in WestonWhat Flat Roof Repairs Costs In Weston-super-Mare
A single fault on a flat roof around Weston - one split, a lifted lap, an upstand come away, an outlet cleared and re-dressed - is generally £180 to £600. A larger localised area, say a corner that has been letting go for a while and has taken some deck with it, runs £400 to £1,100 because timber comes into it. Where the answer is that the covering has finished, you will be told that instead, and the re-cover figures are on the cost page rather than buried inside a repair quote.
See The Full Cost GuideFlat Roof Repairs - Your Questions
Can my flat roof be repaired or does it all need doing?
It hinges on how many previous repairs it is carrying and how the deck feels underfoot. One clean fault in a covering that is otherwise sound is a straightforward repair and good value. A roof with several patches, spongy areas and water sitting on it has told you what it thinks, and further patching is renting time at a poor rate.
How quickly can somebody come out?
If water is actively coming into the house, say so when you ring - that changes the order of the day. The first visit is about stopping it getting worse, and the proper repair gets booked from there. For anything that is annoying rather than urgent, we are usually a few days out.
Why does it only leak in certain weather?
That is genuinely useful information rather than a complication. A leak that shows up in wind but not in steady rain almost always means something at an edge or an upstand is being driven at from the side - very common on the exposed roofs around Uphill and along the seafront. One that needs hours of rain before it appears is more likely to be a blocked outlet slowly filling the roof up.
There is a soft patch when I walk on it. What does that mean?
It means water has been into the deck and the boards are rotting. It also means the job changed. Anything laid over soft decking has nothing solid to hold it, so the timber has to come out and be replaced first. Better to know now than to pay for a covering laid on porridge.
Will my insurance cover it?
Buildings cover deals with sudden events - a gale lifting a covering off, something falling on the roof. It does not deal with things wearing out, and a slow leak from an ageing roof is filed under exactly that. If yours started the night of a named storm it is worth a call to your insurer, and we can give you a written description of the failure and photographs either way.
Do you do repairs on commercial roofs too?
Yes, and quite a lot of them - shops, units and workshops around Weston and down at Highbridge. The approach is the same but the scheduling is not, since most businesses would rather we were there on a Saturday than blocking a fire exit on a Tuesday. There is more on the commercial page about how that side runs.
While you are here: Commercial Flat Roofing ·EPDM Rubber Roofing ·Fascias, Soffits & Guttering
Where We Work
Flat Roof Repairs 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 Flat Roof Repairs
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.