Newtown roofing: parapets, box gutters and shopfront roofs

Look up on King Street and you can see the problem

Stand anywhere along King Street or Enmore Road and look above the awnings. Parapets, rendered facades, chimney stacks and almost no visible guttering. The streets behind — out towards Camperdown Memorial Rest Park, Australia Street and the Erskineville Road end — are continuous rows of two-storey terraces and single-fronted workers cottages, all attached, all parapeted.

Newtown also straddles a council boundary, with part of it in the Inner West Council area and part in the City of Sydney. For roofing, the construction matters more than the boundary.

Where the water actually gets in

Not through the tiles or slate, usually. The entry points on a Newtown roof are:

1. The box gutter sump. Leaf litter and roof grit choke the outlet, the channel fills, and water goes over the back lip into the roof cavity. A box gutter on a Class 1 dwelling is sized for a five-minute downpour with only 30 mm of freeboard, so it does not take much.
2. No overflow device. Many of these gutters were built without any independent overflow discharging to atmosphere, so a blockage has no release valve.
3. The parapet. Cracked capping, failed damp-proof course, water soaking down inside the brickwork and emerging at a window head one floor below.
4. The party-wall junction. One flashing, two houses, decades of mismatched patching.
5. Chimney lead. Lifted aprons on disused stacks, with water coming down the inside of the flue.

Leak repairs and box gutter work between them cover nearly every call from this suburb.

Shopfront residences on the strip

The commercial buildings along King Street have large flat or near-flat roofs behind a parapet, draining through internal box gutters and very few outlets. When one fails, the water lands in the shop or the flat above it. These need the drainage capacity assessed against the catchment area, not just a patch over the leak.

Access on a zero-setback site

Terraces here sit straight onto the footpath. Scaffolding is normal on two-storey work, a footpath occupation is often required, and material access can mean through the house or down a narrow rear lane. On King Street itself, pedestrian traffic adds another layer. It is all costed in the written quote up front.

Nearby suburbs

Enmore, Erskineville, Camperdown and Stanmore. The complete area list is here.

Call for a free inspection

(02) 8000 1103 or get a free quote.