The awkward thing about flat roofing is that a finished job is invisible. Nobody can see it from the pavement, and a photograph of a good one looks identical to a photograph of a terrible one - the difference lives underneath, in the deck, the fall and the way the edges were detailed. So rather than a wall of pictures, here is what the different types of job involve and what we spend the time on in each.
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
New build over a single storey rear extension. Warm deck from the outset, tapered insulation to give a proper fall towards a single outlet, and rubber over the top. Built to 0.15 W/m²K because a new roof on an extension is held to the new-element standard, not the re-roof one.
The estates climbing the ridge at Worle are full of attached garages with original felt, and they all reach the end at roughly the same time. Strip, replace whatever decking has gone soft, restore the fall, and re-cover. A day each, usually.
Glass into a flat roof transforms a dark rear kitchen more than any other single change. The work that matters is invisible afterwards: kerb height built for wind-driven rain, structure trimmed properly, and the covering dressed up and over rather than merely up to the frame.
Anything walked on regularly wants fibreglass rather than a membrane. Laminated as one continuous shell over the deck and up every upstand, with non-slip aggregate in the topcoat - which matters on a coast where surfaces stay damp from sea air alone.
Large-area single ply, phased across weekends so the business never lost a trading day, with nothing left open overnight. Fixing patterns calculated by zone - denser at the corners and perimeter where uplift is worst, standard through the middle.
Older stone properties in the villages tend to have flat roofs on later additions - a porch, a link section, a rear outshot. Small roofs, disproportionate detailing, and often a conservation area to be mindful of before anything visible changes.
Photographs on this page are illustrative of the types of work described rather than images of specific completed jobs.
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.
Whether it is a garage that has finally given up or a unit roof that needs doing without closing the business, the first step is the same and it is free. One of us comes out and stands on it.
