We have a canopy on the front of our house that covers a bay window, there are three courses of concrete roof tiles on this canopy which have all sorts of discolouration on them from years of weathering. I have seen people with these tiles that have cleaned them to a spanking new finish, can anyone recommend a way or product to clean up the tiles? I hear that the cowboy way is to pressure wash them so I don't really fancy doing it like that!
TIA
Gerry
I don't think you'd do any damage to concrete tiles by pressure washing them. Perhaps if they are old and brittle, avoid squirting from close to at the highest pressure, lest you fracture one (I say this having put my foot through a concrete tile on the roof of my workshop). Obviously avoid angling the washer underneath the tiles.
However, isn't the moss, etc., more attractive than the concrete? ;-)
Regards Richard
Richard replied:
Did you manage to replace it without removing all the tiles? I am contemplating installing a vented tile in my bathroom roof for an extractor fan and need to know the best way to take out one tile somewhere in the middle...
TIA
AngusC
CUT
Depends on the roof tiler who tiled the roof, if he's nailed the tile in the correct spec. Find the approxamitt area you want to fit the vent, try pushing the two tiles above up. This should reveal the tile head of the tile you want to replace with the vent tile. Make sure that the pipe adaptor will not fowl the rafter. Cut two diagonal slits in the underlay, with a sharp Stanley knife, in the centre about 4" or 100mm, pull the four underlay flaps out ward, push the pipe adaptor through until the vent tile is interlock under the left hand side, there should be a retaining clip come with the vent tile. This fits under the right-hand bottom under the tile and over the vent over lap. Then just pull down the tiles above, starting with the right hand one first. With a trowel under the second tile and pull down with your hand pushing down on the tile lifting with the trowel.
Why would pressure washing be the cowboy way? It's an excellent way of cleaning roof tiles.
The message from gerry contains these words:
Marley certainly advise against pressure washing. We use Armillatox and elbow grease. Three courses shouldn't take that long to clean, with a deck scubber.
Heh, no I didn't, because I didn't have a matching (green) tile to hand.I made a temporary repair with some lead sheet under the tiles, and some flashing tape.
We've been in this house for 5 months. Now winter has kicked in, I can see and get into areas of the garden that were formerly overgrown. I've now found some of the tiles behind the old shed at the bottom, along with some of the bricks that had been cut out of a gable end wall to insert a window. I thought the window had been there for decades, as it looks about 30 years old, but a neighbour tells me it was done 6 years ago - the previous occupant, a joiner/builder, was a bit of a hoarder of materials, and had obviously collected a 1970s window from somewhere ;-)
I now need to brick up this window, as I'm putting dormers in the back and (a) won't need it, and (b) need to insert a purlin where its lintel is. I now have 60 matching bricks, including some others I found round the other side of the house. I need 115, and they're proving hard to match. They date from the early 60s, have a rusticated finish, and their surfaces have a variety of complimentary hues, from pinkish red, to orangy red, to a goldy colour. Some are a greenish black. Sounds garish but they all have the same base colour and blend well. How do they get these shades? Is somethig sprayed on, or would different oxides have been included in the clay?
I took samples to the brick expert at Travis PErkins in York, and we pored over the brick library. As a result of this I have bricked up another window already with a mixture of Flamboruough Gold (which are a paler version of the more goldy-coloured bricks that make up about 1 in 7 of the existing walls), and Yorkshire Royal Mix. Unfortunately most of the latter have a strong black element that is at odds with the rest of the house, so I used the ones that didn't. The result is a slightly-washed out version of the bolder colours in the existing walls, but as we've inset the new brickwork 1/2 inch within the old window frame, it doesn't look too bad. However, the window I want to brick up now is much more conspicuous, on the first floor of the gable end (of chalet bungalow) that you see from the road as you walk or drive through the village, and I want to bond the bricks in.
This leaves me with a problem - I have no way to determine what the bricks are, or where they came from, except that they were probably from a long-defunct small brickworks somewhere - local bricks, for local people. I might take a ride round the surrounding area on the bike, and see if I can spot any other houses made from the same brick
- maybe someone has a stack in their garden ... ;-) They aren't really the kind of "traditional" brick that reclamation yards sell, or that get remanufactured for early 21st century Georgian cottages. I think it will look crap if I bond in the newer bricks, possibly still crap if I mix in the old ones that I have found. Another option is to use blocks and have a rendered panel. That would still look like a blocked-up window, though. I do have a small quantity of old walling stone, but that might look a bit naff in a 1960s bungalow!
If I knew what the bricks were called I'd have a head start.
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