About an hour from Weston · Somerset area
Flat Roofing In Frome
Renovating in Frome and found a flat roof nobody mentioned?
Flat roofing for a town that restores its buildings rather than replacing them
Frome is a town of renovators, and renovators find flat roofs. The steep stone streets around Catherine Hill and the centuries-old weavers' housing of Trinity carry one of the densest listed-building concentrations in Somerset, and at any given moment a healthy share of the town is mid-restoration - which is usually when somebody lifts a hatch and discovers the flat section over the back addition, the valley behind the parapet, or the workshop roof at the end of the garden. That is where we come in. Frome work is heritage-aware, access-creative and frost-conscious, because this is high ground at the Mendips' eastern end and the winters bite harder than they do on our coast.
Get A Free Flat Roof Quote In Frome
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 Frome
The building stock explains the trade. Frome grew rich on wool and cloth centuries before Somerset's seaside towns existed, and its legacy is stone - terraces stacked up gradients, the Trinity area's early industrial workers' housing, mills and workshops repurposed into homes and studios. Flat roofing here is almost never the main event; it is the connective tissue, the additions and links and infills built behind and between listed frontages over three hundred years. Renewing it well means materials and details that sit quietly against old stone, and the conservation question answered with Somerset Council before anything else.
The two practical constants are cold and access. Frome sits high enough that freeze-thaw is the covering-killer - lingering water becomes a nightly wedge in every gap from November to March, so falls and dry details lead our specifications the way they do at Winscombe and Cheddar. And the townscape that makes Frome lovely makes it awkward: steep narrow streets, stepped lanes, yards reached through the house. We plan access like a removals firm - what carries through where, which neighbour's gate helps, where the waste goes - because on Catherine Hill the logistics are half the job and pretending otherwise is how quotes go wrong.
Planning in Frome: Frome is Somerset Council, formerly Mendip District, and carries one of the densest concentrations of listed buildings in the county. The conservation area takes in the steep medieval streets around Catherine Hill and the early industrial housing of Trinity, so a good share of roof work here needs the heritage question answered first. Planning and building control for Frome 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 Frome
Flat Roof Repairs
Restoration-minded repair for a restoration-minded town - the failed detail mended, the old fabric respected.
Read more about Flat Roof Repairs in Frome
EPDM Rubber Roofing
Where a covering has genuinely finished, one-piece rubber handles Frome's frost cycles better than anything rigid.
Read more about EPDM Rubber Roofing in Frome
Fascias, Soffits & Guttering
Steep roofs over steep streets move serious water. Gutters and downpipes that cope are part of every Frome roofline we touch.
Read more about Fascias, Soffits & Guttering in FromeHow Frome Jobs Get Done Right
Old stone, high ground and no two houses alike. Four habits that make Frome work go smoothly.
Heritage question answered first
With this many listed buildings, we check the designation before quoting - listed consent where it applies, conservation-area visibility where it does not, and a clear written position either way.
Frost designed out
High-ground winters turn standing water into a patient crowbar. Falls get rebuilt with conviction and details kept dry, because a Frome roof that drains fast is a roof that keeps its decade.
Access planned like a puzzle
Stepped lanes and through-the-house yards are normal here. We work out the route for materials, scaffold and waste before pricing, so the quote survives contact with the street.
Renovation projects joined properly
Half our Frome calls come mid-restoration. We coordinate with your builder, slot the roof into the programme, and leave details the next trade can work up to.
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
"Frome is the only town where most of the flat roofs we see were found rather than known about - discovered behind a parapet or over a back addition partway through somebody's renovation, having quietly done their job unexamined for fifty years."
Based on the enquiries handled by RPS Flat Roofing
How A Frome Job Runs
The same eight stages on every roof we take on, whether it is about an hour 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 Frome 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 Frome
Catherine Hill
The steep cobbled artisan street that has become Frome's calling card - independent shops, galleries and makers climbing the hill in a run of painted frontages, with barely a chain store in sight.
Learn more about Catherine Hill
The Frome Independent
On the first Sunday of the month from March to November, the town centre becomes one of the South West's best street markets - two hundred plus stalls of makers, producers and traders filling Market Place and winding up the hill.
Learn more about The Frome Independent
Cheese & Grain
The market hall turned music venue that puts Frome on touring schedules it has no business being on - gigs, craft markets and community events under one Victorian roof by the river.
Learn more about Cheese & GrainWhere We Work In Frome
Frome is about an hour from Weston, which puts every street on this map inside our normal survey run - including Catherine Hill, Trinity, Fromefield 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 Frome
Frome pricing carries two honest variables on top of the standard ranges - access and heritage. A straightforward garage or modern-estate extension prices normally at £1,400 to £2,600 and £2,200 to £4,000 respectively; a back addition reached through the house on a stepped lane, or a detail renewed against a listed frontage, is priced per job with the access plan itemised. Repairs start from £200 because of the hour's drive. We batch Frome visits, and joining a neighbour's job or a renovation programme is the cheapest way in.
See The Full Cost GuideFlat Roofing In Frome - Your Questions
Is my Frome house listed, and what does that mean for the roof?
With Frome's concentration of listed buildings it is always worth checking - Somerset Council holds the register, and we check as part of the survey. Listed status means alterations need consent wherever they are on the building, though like-for-like renewal of a hidden flat section is normally the least contentious case there is. Unlisted houses inside the conservation area only face the visibility question.
How do you get materials to a roof on Catherine Hill?
Carefully, and with a plan made before the quote. Steep, stepped and narrow streets mean smaller loads, hand-carrying, early-morning drops before the town wakes, and occasionally a neighbour's yard borrowed with thanks. It is all workable - Frome tradespeople have managed for three centuries - but it is priced as the real task it is rather than discovered on day one.
Why does frost matter more in Frome than on the coast?
Altitude and aspect. Frome sits on high ground at the Mendips' eastern end, and winter nights freeze here when Weston's coast stays soft. Any water lingering on a flat roof becomes an expanding wedge in whatever gap it finds, night after night, all season. The defence is drainage - fast falls, dry details, clear outlets - which is why those lead every specification we write in the town.
Can you fit in with our renovation builder?
Gladly - a good share of our Frome work arrives exactly that way. We survey with your builder, agree where the roof sits in the programme, and hand over details the following trades can finish against. A flat roof renewed at the right moment in a restoration costs less and lasts longer than one bolted on at the end.
Areas We Cover Around Frome
Get The Roof Your Frome Restoration Deserves
Whether it is a discovery behind a parapet or a garage that has simply had enough, one of us will survey it free, answer the heritage and access questions in writing, and price the job fixed. Frome looks after its buildings; we are happy to be part of that.