How Inner West Roofers works, and what we are set up for

What this is

Inner West Roofers connects homeowners across 29 Inner West suburbs with roofing work that gets done properly. You describe the problem, we arrange a free inspection, and you get a written quote and a plain explanation of what is happening to your roof.

The work itself is carried out by established, licensed and insured roofing contractors working to NSW Fair Trading requirements. Completed work carries a written workmanship warranty. There is a full disclosure of how the arrangement works if you want the detail — we would rather you read it than wonder.

Call (02) 8000 1103 to start.

Why this area needed its own focus

The Inner West is the hardest housing stock in Sydney to roof, and the reason is structural rather than meteorological.

Over large parts of Newtown, Enmore, Erskineville, Petersham, Stanmore, Lewisham, Annandale, Balmain and Rozelle, the houses are attached. There are no eaves and no hanging gutters. Rainwater is collected in a box gutter inside the building, between two brick parapets, and leaves through a single downpipe. Your roof physically meets your neighbours, with one flashing serving both houses.

That produces a set of problems a general roofer may only see occasionally:

• Box gutters that back up into the ceiling rather than overflowing outside
• Box gutters with no independent overflow device at all
• Parapet walls with failed cappings and long-dead damp-proof courses
• Shared junctions that need access across someone else's roof
• Genuine slate on corroded iron nails, which is a different trade to tiling
• Original chimney stacks with lifted lead aprons
• Sites with zero setback, no side path and a narrow rear lane

Jobs like these get declined. We are set up for them, and that is most of why people call.

The other half of the list

Not everything we cover is a terrace. The suburb list also takes in large Federation homes on real blocks at Strathfield, Burwood, Haberfield and Concord, inter-war brick through Dulwich Hill, Summer Hill and Croydon, and post-war stock on the ridges above the Cooks River at Earlwood, Canterbury and Hurlstone Park.

Those roofs are more conventional — ridge pointing, valley irons, cracked tiles, eaves gutters — and they are far easier to get onto. They are also where roof restoration genuinely makes sense, which it usually does not on a slate terrace.

Heritage is part of the job, not an obstacle to it

Much of the area sits inside listed heritage conservation areas across five councils: Inner West, Burwood, Strathfield, Canada Bay and Canterbury-Bankstown. Haberfield is listed as area C54 under the Inner West LEP 2022, with extra built-form controls in clause 6.20. The suburb of Hurlstone Park contains six conservation areas under the Canterbury-Bankstown LEP 2023.

Practically, that means the covering, profile and colour visible from the street can be constrained, and a change of material may require consent rather than being exempt work. We specify to those controls and tell you when council is likely to be involved. We do not predict council decisions and we do not pretend the controls are not there.

How quoting works

1. You call or send the details.
2. A free inspection is arranged. Someone gets onto the roof, or into the cavity, or uses aerial imagery where there is no safe access.
3. You are told what is happening, with photographs, including anything that was checked and ruled out.
4. You get a written, itemised quote — including access, scaffolding and any permit requirement, because on these streets those are real costs rather than fine print.
5. You decide. No pressure and no obligation.

We do not quote roofs over the phone. On Inner West housing a square-metre rate given sight-unseen would be wrong, and you would find out why halfway through.

What we will tell you honestly

• When a repair is the right answer and a replacement is not
• When restoration is being sold to someone who should not buy it
• When the leak you think is in the roof is actually coming down inside a parapet wall
• When a claim is unlikely to be treated as storm damage, before you lodge it
• When we are not the right people for the job

Nothing on this site invents a rating, a review count, an award or a founding year. When there are real reviews, they will appear here.

Start with a free inspection

Call (02) 8000 1103, request a quote, or see the suburbs we cover and the contact page.