About 20 minutes from Weston town centre · North Somerset area
Flat Roofing In Winscombe
Does your Winscombe house have the flat roof it was born with?
Renewing the designed-in flat roofs of a village that built boldly in the sixties
Winscombe did something unusual for a Somerset village: it embraced flat roofs on purpose. Through the sixties and seventies, the generous plots off Winscombe Hill, Woodborough Road and around Sidcot filled with confident detached houses whose architects designed flat sections in from the start - split-level wings, carport decks, first-floor terraces, whole low-slung roof planes. Fifty years on, those roofs are original features reaching the end of their first or second covering, and renewing them well means respecting what the architect intended while quietly upgrading everything underneath to modern standards. That is a more interesting job than a garage re-felt, and it is one Winscombe hands us regularly.
Get A Free Flat Roof Quote In Winscombe
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 Winscombe
The village sits properly in the hills - up in the Mendip foothills where the air is colder than the coast and the frosts arrive earlier and stay later. For flat roofing that changes the enemy. Down in Weston the coverings are worked loose by wind and salt; up here the slow killer is freeze-thaw, water finding a hairline gap, freezing overnight, and jacking it wider a fraction at a time all winter. A covering with a minor ponding problem that would be cosmetic at sea level becomes structural arithmetic in Winscombe, because every puddle is a potential ice lens. Falls, outlets and dry details matter here the way salt-rated trims matter at Uphill.
There is also the paperwork dimension: part of the parish lies within the Mendip Hills National Landscape, where design and materials attract more scrutiny than they would on an estate street in town. In practice most flat-roof renewals are low-profile and uncontroversial, but where a roof is prominent - a terrace visible from the hillside, a street-facing carport deck - the finish and colour choices deserve thought, and occasionally a conversation with North Somerset Council. Fibreglass in a considered grey earns its keep in exactly these positions.
Planning in Winscombe: Winscombe sits partly within the Mendip Hills National Landscape, where design and materials get scrutinised more closely than they would on the coast. Planning and building control for Winscombe sit with North 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 Winscombe
GRP Fibreglass Roofing
For Winscombe's visible roof planes and walk-out terraces, a rigid laminate in a considered colour respects the architecture.
Read more about GRP Fibreglass Roofing in Winscombe
Warm Roof Upgrades
Sixties houses were built for sixties fuel prices. A warm deck under the new covering is the difference between usable rooms and cold ones under these big roof planes.
Read more about Warm Roof Upgrades in Winscombe
EPDM Rubber Roofing
On the bigger unseen planes, one-piece rubber handles frost cycles gracefully - it flexes where rigid coverings crack.
Read more about EPDM Rubber Roofing in WinscombeWhat Renewing A Winscombe Original Involves
These houses were designed, not assembled - and their roofs deserve renewal in the same spirit. Four things we hold onto in Winscombe.
Frost treated as the main load
Falls get rebuilt with real conviction and details kept relentlessly dry, because up here standing water turns to ice and ice opens joints. A Winscombe roof that drains fast is a roof that winters well.
The architecture respected
Fascia lines, edge shadows and roof colours are part of what makes these houses good. We renew coverings without coarsening the details the original designer sweated over.
Insulation brought up five decades
Most of these roofs predate any meaningful thermal standard. Renewal is the once-in-a-generation moment to add a warm deck, and on planes this size the difference downstairs is dramatic.
National Landscape awareness
Where a prominent roof sits inside the Mendip designation, finish and colour get chosen to sit quietly in the view - and checked with North Somerset when the position calls for it.
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
"The Winscombe roofs we renew are routinely the oldest surviving coverings we see anywhere - sixties originals still limping along under three coats of patch paint. The houses were built well enough to deserve better, and their owners usually agree the moment they see the deck opened up."
Based on the enquiries handled by RPS Flat Roofing
How A Winscombe Job Runs
The same eight stages on every roof we take on, whether it is about 20 minutes from Weston town centre 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 Winscombe 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 Winscombe
Crook Peak & Wavering Down
The rocky peak at the west end of the Mendips is the best short climb in Somerset, joined to Wavering Down by a glorious ridge walk over largely National Trust land - the levels on one side, the Channel on the other, and the whole thing walkable from the village.
Learn more about Crook Peak & Wavering Down
Shute Shelve Tunnel
Winscombe's stretch of the Strawberry Line dives under the hill through a lit 165-metre railway tunnel, where the rock visibly changes from soft marl to hard limestone halfway through - a small marvel of Victorian engineering you can cycle.
Learn more about Shute Shelve Tunnel
King's Wood
The National Trust woodland on the slope above the village, carpeted in spring flowers and threaded with paths that link up towards Wavering Down - the local start point for half of Winscombe's dog walks and all of its bluebell photographs.
Learn more about King's WoodWhere We Work In Winscombe
Winscombe is about 20 minutes from Weston town centre, which puts every street on this map inside our normal survey run - including Winscombe Hill, Sandford Road, Woodborough Road 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 Winscombe
Winscombe's designed-in roofs are bigger and more detailed than the county-average garage, and the pricing reflects area rather than postcode - larger planes commonly run £3,000 to £6,000 renewed properly, with the warm-roof layer priced separately, while conventional garages and small wings sit in the usual £1,400 to £2,600 band. The frost-proofing is not a line item; rebuilding honest falls is simply part of how we specify up here. Repairs from £180 where the original covering has life left.
See The Full Cost GuideFlat Roofing In Winscombe - Your Questions
Why does frost matter more for my roof in Winscombe than in Weston?
Altitude. The Mendip foothills run colder than the coast, so water that lingers on a roof up here freezes far more often - and each freeze expands in whatever gap it found, working joints open a fraction at a time. The defence is boring and absolute: falls that shed water quickly and details that stay dry. A Winscombe roof that never ponds barely notices winter.
Does the Mendip Hills National Landscape restrict my roof work?
Only part of the parish sits within the designation, and most flat-roof renewals are low-profile enough to pass without comment. Where a roof is genuinely prominent in the landscape - a visible terrace or street-facing plane - material and colour choices matter more, and we check the position with North Somerset Council when it does. It shapes the specification more often than it blocks anything.
Can you renew a sixties flat roof without changing how the house looks?
That is precisely the brief we enjoy. The trick is in the edges - keeping fascia lines and trim profiles consistent with the original design while the build-up underneath gains modern insulation and falls. Done right, the house looks exactly as intended and simply stops being cold.
Is a warm roof worth it on a house this age?
On a Winscombe original, almost always. These roofs predate meaningful insulation standards, the planes are large, and the rooms beneath them lose heat accordingly. Adding rigid insulation above the deck during renewal costs a fraction of what it would as a standalone project and changes how the whole upper floor feels in January.
Areas We Cover Around Winscombe
Renew A Winscombe Roof The Way It Was Designed
One of us will come and look at what the architect left you, tell you what the covering and falls have left in them, and price a renewal that keeps the house's lines while bringing the roof fifty years forward. Free survey, fixed figure, no drama.