Roofing for the Inner West, where the roofs are joined together

Leaks in the Inner West start in places you cannot see from the ground

Stand on Darling Street in Balmain, King Street in Newtown or Ramsay Street in Haberfield and look up. You will see parapets, chimney stacks and the odd sliver of slate — almost no guttering. That is the whole problem in one view.

On attached housing, rainwater is not thrown off an eave and down a pipe. It is collected in a box gutter sitting between two brick parapets, carried along a shallow fall to a sump, and dropped down a single pipe. When that one path blocks or the lining splits, the water has nowhere else to go but over the back of the gutter and into your ceiling.

That is the fault we are called to most often, and it is why a stained cornice in a Petersham terrace needs a different diagnosis to a stained cornice in a Concord bungalow.

Call (02) 8000 1103 or ask for a free quote and someone will get up there and look properly.

The four faults behind most Inner West roof work

Box gutters with one way out

A box gutter on a Class 1 home is designed for a very short, very intense burst of rain — the 1% AEP five-minute intensity, with a minimum 200 mm flat base and 30 mm of freeboard left spare for wind-driven spill. Add a tennis ball of leaf litter at the sump and that design margin disappears. Many older Inner West box gutters also have no independent overflow at all, so there is nothing to dump the excess safely to the outside of the building.

Parapet cappings and through-wall flashings

The top of a parapet is exposed brickwork, often with a failing capping or no damp-proof course left in it. Water soaks down inside the wall and surfaces metres away from where it got in. Finding it means tracing the wall, not just the roof.

The party-wall junction

Where your roof meets next door, there is a flashing that belongs to both houses. These get patched by different trades over decades, sealed with silicone that has gone hard, and end up as the leak nobody wants to own. We are comfortable working these junctions, and that is a large part of why people call.

Slate at the end of its nail life

Original slate was fixed with iron nails. Once the nails corrode, slates slip one at a time and the roof starts shedding onto the footpath. The slate itself is often fine; the fixings are not. That distinction decides whether you are looking at a repair or a re-slate.

The other half of the area is a different job entirely

The 29 suburbs we cover are not one housing type. Through Strathfield, Burwood, Haberfield and Concord there are large Federation homes on real blocks, with deep eaves, terracotta tile and prominent gables — the Churchill Avenue, Homebush Road and Redmyre Road conservation areas in Strathfield are full of Federation Queen Anne roofs with complicated valleys. Dulwich Hill, Summer Hill and Croydon are mostly inter-war brick with tiled hips. Earlwood, Canterbury and Hurlstone Park add post-war stock on the ridges above the Cooks River.

Those roofs fail in ordinary ways: crumbling ridge pointing, rusted valley irons, blocked eaves gutters, cracked tiles under foot traffic. They are also far easier to access than a terrace with no side path.

Which half you live in changes the method, the materials and the cost. See the areas we cover for the detail on your suburb.

What we actually do

• Roof repairs — leaks traced to their source, not sealed over
• Roof replacement — full re-roofs in slate, tile or metal
• Metal and Colorbond roofing — low-pitch and skillion work behind parapets
• Roof restoration — rebed, repoint and recoat for tiled roofs
• Gutter repair and replacement — box gutters, eaves gutters, sumps and overflows
• Storm and emergency repairs — make-safe first, permanent fix after
• Roof inspections and reports — for buyers, for leaks, for insurers

Access is part of the quote, not an afterthought

A Rozelle terrace with a zero setback to the footpath, a one-metre rear lane and no side gate is a scaffolding job before it is a roofing job. Pretending otherwise is how homeowners end up with a quote that doubles halfway through.

We look at how gear gets in, whether a footpath or kerb occupation is needed, and whether the work can be reached from your own roof. That goes in the written quote with everything else, so the number you are given is the number.

Getting a straight answer costs nothing

The inspection is free and carries no obligation. You get a plain explanation of what is happening, the options, and a written quote. Work is carried out by established, licensed and insured roofing contractors working to NSW Fair Trading requirements, and every completed job carries a written workmanship warranty.

Call (02) 8000 1103 or send through the details and we will come and look.