Justin Coulter
Clay has been used to cover roofs in Britain for centuries, and the variety on offer is wider than most homeowners realise. Drive from Kent up to Norfolk and you will see quite different clay roofs, shaped by local tradition as much as by looks. Here is how the main types compare, and which suits … Read more
Roof ventilation rarely gets a thought until a musty smell or mould appears in the loft, but it is doing constant, quiet work behind the scenes. As homes have become better insulated and more airtight over the years, the roof space above them has often become colder relative to the living space below, which is … Read more
Roof shape affects far more than how a house looks from the street. It changes cost, how well the roof handles wind and rain, how much usable loft space you get, and even what materials are practical to use. Here is a clear overview of the main roof shapes found across the UK, with links … Read more
Underlay sits beneath every tile or slate on a pitched roof, and most homeowners never see it or think about it until something goes wrong. It is a genuinely important layer, acting as a second line of defence against wind-driven rain and snow that gets past the roof covering itself, and the type used affects … Read more
Search online for roof shingles and most of what comes up is American, and for good reason. Shingles are the default roofing material across most of the United States, but the picture in the UK is almost entirely different. Here is what the term actually means on this side of the Atlantic, and where shingles … Read more
A dormer is one of the most common ways UK homeowners add genuine, usable space to a loft. Unlike a simple rooflight conversion, a dormer physically extends the roof structure outward, creating proper vertical walls and full standing headroom rather than working within the existing sloped ceiling. What a dormer actually is A dormer is … Read more
Roof valleys and guttering do the same basic job in different places. Both exist to collect and channel rainwater safely away from a building. Both are also easy to forget about until something goes wrong, since neither is visible from ground level in the way a cracked tile or damaged chimney often is. What a … Read more
Mansard roofs stand out immediately once you know what to look for: steep, almost vertical sides with a much flatter section on top, often with dormer windows built straight into the steep part. They are closely associated with period London properties, and with loft conversions that turn an ordinary attic into a genuinely usable extra … Read more
Slate is the most expensive common roofing material in the UK, and also potentially the last roof a house ever needs. Whether that trade-off makes sense depends heavily on which type of slate you are actually comparing, since “slate roof” covers a much wider price range than most people expect. Not all slate is the … Read more
If you have noticed cracked mortar along the edge of your roof at the gable end, you have already found the problem that dry verge systems were designed to solve. The verge is where roof tiles meet the brickwork, and it is one of the more exposed parts of the roof to wind and weather. … Read more