New-Build Homes

Young roofs with small faults — fixed properly before they find your plasterwork.

Our corridor is one of England's fastest-growing: Berryfields and Kingsbrook at Aylesbury, Priors Hall at Corby, Stanton Cross at Wellingborough, the expansion flanks of Northampton and Milton Keynes. Thousands of roofs under ten years old — overwhelmingly sound, but not faultless, and their faults follow a pattern.

Why nearly-new roofs misbehave

Modern roofs are built to a good standard — when every fixing actually meets it. The common snags are tiles nailed or clipped to the bare minimum that lift in the first serious storm, dry-verge and dry-ridge units not quite seated or missing their screws, flashings dressed in a hurry where the roof meets brickwork, and mortarwork (where any exists) already cracking. Individually trivial; left alone, each is a route for water into insulation and plasterboard that cost rather more than the fix.

Warranty first — then us

We'd rather you didn't pay for something the builder owes you. Inside the first two years, defects are the developer's to fix; structural warranty cover runs to year ten, though minor roof snags often fall outside it in practice. Push those routes first. When they're exhausted, closed or just too slow while water is getting in, we refix properly — to the fixing specification the wind actually tests, not the minimum — and the repeat callout stops being annual.

Repair options

Repair or replace

Replacement barely features on this page — these coverings have decades ahead. The trap is the opposite one: treating a young roof as maintenance-free and letting a ten-minute tile refix become a soaked ceiling. On new builds, "repair" almost always means "small, cheap, and worth doing this month".

Our process

How we do it

After a snag we check its siblings: a tile that lifted usually has neighbours fixed to the same standard, and a loose verge unit rarely travels alone. It's a short survey of the vulnerable details — verges, ridge, flashings, the weather side — so one visit catches the set rather than the sample.

Common questions

Frequently asked

The developer says storm-lifted tiles are "weather, not workmanship" — are they right? +

Sometimes, but a properly fixed modern roof is designed to shrug off normal British storms. When tiles lift in weather the rest of the street survived, fixings that only just met the minimum are the usual story. Photographs of how the tile was actually fixed settle the argument quickly, whoever ends up doing the work.

Will you do a job as small as two slipped tiles on an estate house? +

Happily. It's exactly the job worth doing promptly, and on modern estates we can often quote from photographs alone — the roofs are consistent enough that pictures plus a postcode tell us nearly everything.

Does having a repair done privately void the NHBC-style warranty? +

A proper repair doesn't void cover on the rest of the house, though the repaired detail itself becomes the repairer's responsibility rather than the warranty's — which is fine if it's done right. Keep the paperwork and photographs; if you're mid-claim on that exact defect, resolve the claim first.