What Does a Complete Tiled Re-Roof Cost in Flint?

The cost variables for a tiled re-roof are much the same everywhere: area and shape, the tile chosen, the condition of the timbers, access, and the work that goes with it. Those are at the end of this guide.

In Flint there is a question worth answering before any of them, because it changes what the sensible answer is.

Was Your Roof Always Tiled?

Cadw's urban character study of Flint records that slate dominates the town's roofscape, particularly machine-cut later nineteenth-century slate — but that some inter-war estates used red roofing tiles in preference to slate.

So a tiled roof in Flint is usually one of two things:

• An inter-war estate roof, where tile is the original covering and the structure was framed for it.
• A slate roof somebody changed, most likely on the older terraced stock.

How to tell which you have

• Look along the street. On a terrace, if most roofs are slate 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.

Why It Matters Beyond Appearance

Structure

A roof framed for machine-cut slate was sized for a lighter covering than concrete tile. If it has been carrying tiles for decades it is probably coping, but it is worth a proper look while the covering is off — particularly at the rafter ends and any purlin.

Pitch

Every tile carries a manufacturer's 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 tile can shed it. On property built for slate this genuinely bites, because slate works at pitches that rule out plain tiles and some interlocking ranges.

The street

On a terrace the roof usually reads as one continuous plane. A tiled roof in a run of slate ones is visible from the end of the street, and on the older Flint stock that is worth weighing.

Choosing the Tile

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 fired material and holds it — which on an inter-war estate originally covered in red tile is worth considering, because a faded grey roof in a run of red ones is conspicuous.

What Should Be in a Complete Price

• Strip and disposal of the existing covering, battens and underlay
• Structural inspection while exposed, with an agreed rate for defective timber
• New breathable underlay, dressed into the gutter at the eaves
• New treated battens at the gauge the chosen tile requires
• The tiles, named by manufacturer and range, with all fittings
• A fixing specification calculated for the address
• Mechanically fixed ridge and hip rather than mortar bedding
• New lead to chimneys, abutments and valleys
• The junction detail where your covering meets a neighbour's, on a terrace
• Eaves and ridge ventilation
• Insulation to the applicable standard where the threshold is crossed
• Scaffolding, and any footway licence needed
• Building control notification or self-certification

Two things worth insisting on

Dry fix rather than mortar. Older roofs have mortar-bedded ridges and verges, and by now that mortar has cracked and let water in. Mechanically fixed systems remove the failure mode — and mortar no longer counts as a means of fixing in any case.

Ventilation. Roofs of this era were frequently built with none, relying on being draughty. Add insulation and a membrane without providing airflow and you get condensation on the underside of the roof.

The Regulations in Wales, in Brief

Flint 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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