Tiled Roof or Slate Roof — What Should I Choose in Deeside?

Deeside is a conurbation of towns and villages rather than a single place, and its housing reflects that. There is a good deal of twentieth-century development built around industry, alongside older property in the constituent settlements. The right covering is not the same across all of it.

Start With What the Building Was Built For

This is the most reliable guide there is, and it costs nothing to establish.

The roof structure was sized for the weight of the original covering, and the pitch was set for that covering's water-shedding characteristics. Going back to it is nearly always the straightforward answer — structurally, technically and visually.

How to work out what was there

• Look along the street. On a terrace or a run of estate housing, the majority usually tells you. If most roofs are one thing and yours is not, yours was changed.
• Look in the loft. Old nail holes in the rafters at a closer gauge than the current battens indicate a previous covering of smaller units — which means slate.
• Look at the pitch. Slate works at lower pitches than most tiles. A roof sitting at the shallow end for the tile on it was probably not designed for that tile.
• Look at the verge and eaves. A covering that overhangs oddly often marks a change onto a roof built for something else.

The Older Village Property

Frequently slate originally, and on that stock slate remains the better answer. It suits the proportions, it is lighter than concrete tile so the structure is being asked to do less, and it tolerates lower pitches.

Where the budget will not reach natural slate, fibre cement slate is a legitimate middle path — lighter, cheaper, uniform in size and quicker to lay, with a shorter expected service life and less visual depth than stone, but far closer to it than any tile.

The Twentieth-Century Estates

Almost universally built with concrete interlocking tile: large units, single-lapped, quick to lay and inexpensive. The structure was framed for it and the pitch — often at the shallower end — was set for it.

There is usually no reason to fight that. A modern interlocking tile is the sensible answer, and the real decision is clay against concrete.

Concrete tiles are coloured with a pigmented surface layer that weathers away over decades, leaving the grey of the concrete beneath. Clay takes its colour from the material and holds it. Whether that matters depends on how long you intend to be in the house.

Slate on a house that never had it is possible — it is lighter and tolerates lower pitches, so there is no technical obstacle — but on an estate where nothing else has it, it is a large amount of money for a result that may look out of place.

The Three Constraints That Override Preference

Pitch

Every covering has a minimum pitch below which it is not warranted, because below that angle wind-driven rain gets pushed back up under the lap faster than the covering sheds it. Slate tolerates the lowest; plain tiles need the steepest. Worth measuring on a rear outrigger or extension, which often sits below the main slope.

Weight

Concrete tile is the heaviest common covering and natural slate one of the lightest. Going lighter is never a structural problem. Going heavier — slate to concrete tile on older property — is a question to answer rather than assume.

The street

On a terrace or a pair of semis the roof usually reads as one continuous plane, so a different covering on one half is visible from a long way off. Not a rule, but worth weighing.

And the Thing That Decides How Long It Lasts

Worth saying, because people choose on stated lifespan. Roofs almost never fail because the covering wore out — they fail at the fixings, the battens, the underlay and the lead.

A well-detailed tiled roof will comfortably outlast a badly detailed slate one. Choose the covering for the building and the budget, then spend the argument on the specification underneath it.

The Regulations in Wales, in Brief

Deeside is in Wales, and the position is not the same as it is across the border. Planning: section 55 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 applies in Wales as well as England, so a like-for-like re-roof is not development at all and needs no permission. But Wales never adopted the 2015 permitted development order that applies in England — it still uses the General Permitted Development Order 1995, as amended.

Building regulations: regulation 23 of the Building Regulations 2010 applies in England and Wales alike. Where more than 50% of the roof's surface area is renewed, or the work forms part of a major renovation, the roof must be brought up to current thermal standards so far as that is technically, functionally and economically feasible. A patch repair does not trigger it, and neither does a roof over unheated space such as a detached garage.

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