Repairing Holes in Roofing Felt (tiled roof)

Dunno, but my current roof doesn't even have sarking, and my previous house had it hanging down in sheets where it had been ripped by some unknown cause. If I could be bothered to fix a few punctures, I'd probably use duct tape. Is it the proper stuff, I'd have thought that it was quite difficult to rip the stuff with your toes. Perhaps flat roofing felt has been used?

Christian.

Yes. Go to Jewsons and buy 10m of slater's felt, to match whatever you have on your roof. Buy a tin of Rubberoid adhesive, too. Cut lengths of felt fropm the roll to fit between the rafters where the sarking is damaged. Glue them on with the adhesive (extremely black sticky gunk that you can get off your skin with paraffin or similar). The bottom of the section you are sticking on should be tucked in above the section below, with a good overlap, so that water doesn't run in. Hold the stuck on bit up with battens 'till the adhesive has set.

J.B.

I'd take the aerial 'fitter' to a small claims court and get the whole roof repaired properly.

It used to be said the only two qualifications most aerial riggers had were the ability to drive a van and climb a ladder. Perhaps they've left out the roof ladder now.

It all sounds a bit unlikely that an arial fitter would be able to do this simply by climbing on the roof. He would need to make a determined effort to lift the tiles, in order to puncture the felt.However if you are certain he has, then get him to pay for the repairs.

There is no effective way to make a proper job, without taking the tiles off first, but you may be able to stick it with the likes of duct tape or similar.

Get another piece of felt, and stick it in position( from inside) over the splits with bituminous lap cement. You'll have to support it for a couple of days whilst the solvents dry out, but it will then work for the next 10 years at least. Regards Capitol

Harry Bloomfield retched Repairing Holes in Roofing Felt (tiled roof) onto my recliner:

Duct tape indeed, COWBOY!

Don't boher. it is only there to stop pressure build up blowing slates/tiles off...

Whilst that may be one factor, it also stops any driven rain reaching the rafters. And given it's a relatively new idea, how did they stop tiles blowing off in the old days?

They used more nails. And they blew off :-)

Nails...... lots of them :-P

That may be one reason, but I think another reason was so that roofs could be made lighter/cheaper, with less overlap needed if there was a layer of felt underneath.

Well the artificial slates on my roof have a fixing at the front end also

- as well as being as tight fitting as any real slate. And underfelt too. The old tiled roof seemed only to have the tiles fixed down every so often

- and no felt. And it leaked like a sieve with the wind in the wrong direction. ;-)

I don't think so.

My roof with reasonable Tyvek overlap., leaked i heavy rain before tiloing through the odd hole.

After tiling, even in huge winds, there is no leak. Thats whey you have a three tile overlap - to stop the wind and driving rain.

The felt helps, not because it is waterproof, but because it is windproof - it slows the draughts down so they can't carry the water up the tiles. This also helps stop the negative pressure effects - where vaccum in a strong gust sucks the tiles off.

The Natural Philosopher wrote on Tuesday (03/02/2004) :

Our roof has a three tile overlap at any place you care to look, but we have no underfelt. We can see the under sides of the tiles from the loft. I was rather puzzled by the fact that the exposed inside tile hedges had been flaunched with a very crumbly mix of sand and cement, much of which has fallen away over the years.

We are located in a very exposed hill top location and despite the lack of any under felt, I have never known water to be driven in by the wind, though it is very draughty up there. Each tile (at a guess) is flat and about 12- 14" long.

Our 1950s semi in Barnet was like that. We never had rain in, but we did get 2" of snow in there, once. :o(

Older houses in the NE of Scotland (where I'm from) have T&G under the slates to stop this happening.

I can vouch for at least one modern house in SW Scotland in this regard. I believe it is generally termed "sarking".

My house was built about 18 years ago - northwest Scotland - and it has 'sarking'.

I was under the impression that it was called sarking whatever it was made from. i.e. wood sarking or felt sarking.

Christian.