During a downpour yesterday, I noticed that (despite me cleaning them in August) our back guttering was overflowing. A little trip up a ladder confirmed the cause ... the sodding 90degree route the gutter takes (at the corner of the "L" our bungalow is shaped like). Anyway, cleaned it our (where does it all come from ?) and noticed that the cement of the valley at the join of the 2 roofs (the angle of the "L") was loose.
Not knowing any roofers, and not being happy with the last one we used, it looks like phoning around again.
Is the best repair to rake out old mortar, and replace with fresh stuff ? Or is there a more modern solution ?
Given the length of the run is about 4m, and I would want both sides done, in the absence of any other problems, would a days work be a good estimate ? 2 days ?
The pointing is really just to stop water being blown under the edges in a strong wind. The valley should otherwise be waterproof without any pointing, although failing pointing might cause water to be rerouted back under the tiles. After relaying my valley but before I had pointed it, I had an enormous down-pour, and nothing came through - turned out to be a good test.
No good just pointing, needs taking out completly, 3/4 day should be ample time to do the job. trying to stick new mortor to lod donst work especaly on roofing work. the mortor is there to support the small cut tiles from dropping down out of alignment.
I think SBR can be added to the mix to aid bonding/waterproofing, Screwfix do Cementone for about =A320 per 5L. I think it is more commonly used for multiple pour post foundations (or three poor with rebar as I did "oops, run out again" :-)
What is the latest you can do re-bed ridge tiles re weather?
My mother has almost all the pointing out in the SW facing diagonal, pointing at a SW facing road, exposed to SW prevailing wind. I know there is a problem with water penetration from the stench when drilling the box room ceiling and there is loft insulation over every room except the SW corner box room so the insulation people knew. No tiles out, but it does not take much water ingress and sagging felt to load the eaves.
What a coincidence, during a downpour at 4am the other night I was woken up by water pouring through the bedroom ceiling, or rather by my partner who couldn't ignore the dripping sound any longer, not nice. We have the same valley arrangement, in our case formed when an extension was added at 90 degrees to the original roof. It wasn't obvious at first what had happened but after stripping back the tiles it turned out that the original battens had been cut flush to the wood forming the base of the valley so some of them were unsupported for up to 600mm and the heavy concrete tiles had made them sag over the years so pulling the lead into a low spot.
Two of us spent about 4 hours fixing it, stripping the tiles off one side, adding wood to support the battens, refitting and repacking with fresh mortar. Ours is a house so access was 5m up a ladder, yours will be easier I guess. Our tiles are simply clipped over the battens so removal is trivial, other fixing methods may slow you down (place the cut tiles to one side on the same row so you know which one came from where when you refit). Strip form the top-down and refit from the bottom-up. Given that we were fixing a design problem as well as repacking I reckon you could do both sides of a valley in a day, easily, provided you don't hit any major snags like broken tiles etc.
BTW you won't get a roof ladder into the valley area (if you think about it the ladder length would need to vary as you moved up) so you'll be walking on the tiles. For safety's sake we slung a line over the roof and tied it off on the other side of the house. If you have a climbing harness you can clip on at a length which would stop you going over the edge but even if you don't it at least provides you with a hand hold.
Oh, and one more thing to consider, there's nowhere to put a cup of tea on a roof.
Thanks for the detailed rundown ... getting a ladder up there will be someone elses problem ... I really struggle with heights - even on a bungalow !!!
However it's nice to have a rough benchmark to be able to filter out any workman who try to take the piss, and say it's a weeks job etc etc ...
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