What Are the Warning Signs That a Roof Needs Urgent Repair?

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A ceiling that is bulging, sagging or dripping from one point. That is trapped water and the ceiling can come down without warning. Keep everybody out of the room.

Anything loose above where people walk. A ridge tile that has moved, a hip tile at the bottom of a hip, a chimney pot at an angle, a length of lifted lead. On a hipped roof the bottom hip tile is the one most likely to go and it is usually directly above a front door or a drive.

Daylight visible through the roof from inside the loft.

Water anywhere near a light fitting or a consumer unit. Turn that circuit off first, then call.

A hole, or something that has struck the roof. A branch, a dislodged aerial, anything that has come through.

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A missing tile or slate. Not usually an emergency, but the felt underneath is now the only barrier and it is not built for the job. It gets more expensive the longer it waits.

An active leak, even a small one. Small leaks do not stay small, and the damage they do to timber and plaster while you wait costs more than the roofing does.

A line that is no longer straight. This is the single most useful thing to look for from the pavement. Roofs are made of straight lines — the ridge, the courses of tiles, the verge, the gutter. A ridge line that dips in the middle, a course of tiles that steps down, a gutter that sags: all of them mean something has moved that should not have.

Mortar on the ground. Lumps of mortar in the gutter or on the path below a gable or a chimney mean the bedding is letting go somewhere above.

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Damp patches that are dry and old. A sharp-edged brown tide mark with no dampness in it is a historic leak. Worth establishing whether it is genuinely dealt with, but it is not this week's problem.

Moss and vegetation. Worth clearing when something else is being done, mainly because of what it does to valleys and gutters. Not a crisis and not a reason for a new roof.

Weathered, patchy-looking tiles. On a concrete tile roof the coloured surface weathering off is a sign of age and it does mean the tiles take up more water than they did. It tells you something about remaining life; it does not mean anything is failing today.

Gutters overflowing. Get it dealt with before winter, because water running down a wall all season causes damp that outlasts the blockage. But it is a gutter, not a roof.

The Things People Miss

Almost everything on the lists above is visible from the ground or from the loft, and almost nobody looks. Two or three minutes at the end of the garden, twice a year, with the sun behind you, finds most of it.

The places worth actually looking at: along the ridge line for dips and gaps; the verges at each gable for missing mortar or unclipped units; around the chimney for lifted lead; the valleys, if you can see them, for debris; and the gutters for plant growth, which is a reliable sign they have been full for a while.

And inside: the loft, in daylight, lights off, twice a year. If you do nothing else on this page, do that one.

What Not to Treat as a Warning Sign

A knock at the door telling you your roof is dangerous. This happens systematically after storms and it is worth being blunt about: nobody who has assessed your roof properly has done so from a passing van.

Take a name and a business address, get anything they claim in writing, and then ring a firm you have looked up. If the roof genuinely is dangerous, it will still be dangerous in an hour.