GRP Fibreglass Roofing · Weston-super-Mare & North Somerset
GRP Fibreglass Roofing In Weston-super-Mare
Got a roof with too many corners for a simple sheet?
A laminate cured in place, so it takes the shape of whatever it is covering
Fibreglass is the same material as a boat hull and it behaves like one. Glass matting is laid over the deck, resin is worked through it, and the whole thing cures into a single hard shell that has taken the exact shape of your roof - every upstand, every corner, every awkward little return around a pipe. That makes it the answer when a roof has too much going on for a sheet product to be sensible, and it makes it the answer when the roof is something you intend to walk on. A balcony, a terrace, a flat roof somebody has to cross twice a year to clean a lantern. Rubber will tolerate that. Fibreglass genuinely does not care. The trade-off is that it is a wet trade with a curing time, so the weather has to co-operate - which in a Weston February it does not always do.
Free GRP Fibreglass 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 GRP Fibreglass Roofing In Weston-super-Mare?
It goes round complicated shapes
Dormer cheeks, parapet returns, tapered corners, upstands at three different heights. Anything a sheet product would have to be cut and joined around, a laminate simply flows into and hardens.
You can walk on it properly
This is its real advantage. On a balcony, a roof terrace or anything with regular foot traffic, fibreglass takes the load without needing protective layers or the anxious tiptoeing a softer covering deserves.
The trim is part of the roof
GRP edge trims get laminated in rather than screwed on, so the edge becomes a continuous part of the shell. On a coast where salt works away at every exposed fixing, having fewer of them at the perimeter is worth a lot.
It comes in colours people accept
Slate greys, mid greys and a decent dark. If your flat roof is visible from an upstairs window, a bedroom in the loft, or the garden of the house behind, that matters more than you would guess before you live with it.
We lay it when it will cure
Resin needs the right temperature and a dry deck. We would rather move a job by a fortnight than lay a laminate that goes off badly, because it will look fine in April and start crazing the following spring.
One shell, top to bottom
Deck, upstands, outlets and edges end up as a single continuous piece of material. There is no join anywhere in the system for water to find, which on a complicated roof is a genuinely different proposition to lapping sheets.
"Nearly every fibreglass roof we are asked to put right was laid in poor conditions rather than badly designed. Cold, damp or rushed curing shows up as pinholes and crazing a couple of years later, and by then nobody remembers what the weather was doing that week."
Based on the grp fibreglass roofing jobs handled by RPS Flat Roofing
How A GRP Fibreglass 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 GRP Fibreglass Roofing Firm
Ask what the deck is going to be
Fibreglass is rigid, so it wants a rigid base. Proper roofing ply, correctly supported, with the boards laid so movement is minimised. Anybody proposing to laminate over old chipboard or a springy existing deck is building a shell over something that flexes, and rigid things on flexible bases crack. Always.
Ask about the weather that week
This is a wet trade with a cure time, unlike rubber which goes down cold and is finished. A firm that will fit fibreglass in any conditions, in any month, has stopped caring what happens to the laminate afterwards. The right answer sometimes is to wait.
Ask to see one they did five years ago
Fibreglass is unusual in that a bad job looks perfect on completion. Pinholes, crazing and delamination take a couple of years to surface. A firm confident enough to point you at work from several years ago is telling you something a photograph from last Tuesday cannot.
Fibreglass Against Rubber, Honestly
| Comparison point | GRP Fibreglass Roofing | EPDM Rubber |
|---|---|---|
| Best suited to | Balconies, terraces, complicated shapes | Straightforward extensions and garages |
| Foot traffic | Fine, that is the point of it | Occasional access only, treat it kindly |
| Weather to install | Needs dry and reasonably mild | Goes down in most of the year |
| How it handles movement | Rigid, so the deck must not flex | Flexes with the timber underneath |
| The finish | Hard, smooth, several colours | Matt black, and that is your lot |
| Typical failure | Cracks if the deck moves | Lifting at an upstand or a trim |
Why We Ask What The Roof Is Sitting On
The first question on a fibreglass job is never about the fibreglass. It is what the deck is made of and how much it moves, because a cured laminate is a rigid shell and rigid shells do not forgive a base that shifts underneath them. Get that pairing wrong and you will see hairline cracks at the corners within two or three years, usually running diagonally away from an upstand, which is the classic signature of a deck flexing under a covering that will not flex with it. Get it right - proper roofing grade ply, supported at the correct centres, boards laid to minimise movement - and you have a roof that will take a ladder, a window cleaner and thirty years of Bristol Channel weather without complaint. This is also why we are blunt about not laminating over an existing covering. You cannot assess timber you cannot see, and on the 1970s stock around Worle and Milton the boards underneath are frequently the entire problem. Where the deck turns out to be beyond saving, the warm roof page covers what to do about the insulation while it is all open anyway.
See what a flat roof costs in WestonWhat GRP Fibreglass Roofing Costs In Weston-super-Mare
Fibreglass sits above rubber, generally by around 15 to 30 per cent on a like-for-like roof, and the extra is mostly labour and the new deck it usually requires. A garage roof is commonly £1,800 to £3,200. A balcony or terrace, where the detailing is fiddlier and the traffic is real, is more often £2,500 to £4,500. If a quote comes in dramatically under those figures, ask what deck is included, because that is nearly always the line that has quietly gone missing.
See The Full Cost GuideGRP Fibreglass Roofing - Your Questions
Fibreglass or rubber for my extension?
If the roof is a simple rectangle nobody walks on, rubber, and you will save money. If it is a balcony, a terrace, something with regular foot traffic, or a shape with several upstands and returns, fibreglass earns the difference. We will tell you which yours is when we look at it, and it is genuinely about the roof rather than which one we would rather sell.
Can it be laid in winter?
Sometimes, and it depends on the week rather than the month. Resin needs a dry deck and enough warmth to cure properly. Weston winters are mild by national standards, so there are workable days through most of the year, but there are also stretches where the honest answer is to wait. A firm that never says wait is not watching the forecast.
Will it crack?
Only if the deck underneath it moves. That is the single failure mode worth worrying about and it is entirely decided before any resin appears - correct ply, correct support, correct board layout. Cracks turning up at corners two years on are a deck problem wearing a fibreglass costume.
Is it slippery when wet?
It can be, which matters on anything people use. Where a roof is a balcony or a terrace we add a non-slip aggregate into the topcoat. It changes the texture slightly and it is well worth having, particularly on a coast where the surface is damp with sea air a fair bit of the year even when it has not rained.
Can you repair fibreglass later on?
Yes, and neatly. A damaged area gets ground back and a new section laminated in, which chemically bonds to the original rather than sitting on top of it. Colour matching a repair on an older roof is not always perfect, but structurally it becomes one piece again.
Does it need building regulations approval?
Same trigger as any other covering. Replace more than a quarter of the roof surface and it counts as renovating a thermal element, which brings the insulation requirement with it - 0.18 W/m2K on a re-roof. North Somerset Council for Weston and the surrounding villages, Somerset Council once you are down at Highbridge or Burnham. We will tell you which side of that line your job falls on before you commit to anything.
While you are here: EPDM Rubber Roofing ·Roof Lanterns & Skylights
Where We Work
GRP Fibreglass 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 GRP Fibreglass 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.