Roof repairs and re-roofing in Hemel Hempstead

Housing in Hemel Hempstead

What the roofs here are like

Hemel Hempstead is a New Town, and that gives it a housing stock unlike anywhere else in our area. Designated in 1946, the town was built out through the 1950s and 1960s on a scale and to a set of standard designs that you can still read across whole neighbourhoods: long terraces and semi-detached blocks with shallow-pitched roofs, wide overhanging eaves, standardised concrete tiles, and a very high incidence of flat-roofed elements - porches, garages, link blocks, dormers and whole single-storey wings. The Old Town at the north end is entirely different, with a period High Street of Georgian and older buildings under tile and slate. Later private estates surround the New Town core.

What we get called out for

The problems that come up in Hemel Hempstead

Flat roofing is far and away our main work in Hemel, and it is a direct consequence of how the town was built. The 1950s and 1960s designs used flat roofs everywhere, and a great many are still on coverings that have been patched rather than replaced. Shallow pitches are the other defining feature: below about 20 degrees a lot of tiles are being asked to work at the very edge of their tolerance, and any settlement or slipped tile turns into a leak quickly. Original concrete tiles across the New Town stock are now well into failure territory. The Old Town, by contrast, is a conservation area and needs an entirely different approach.

Working in Hemel Hempstead

Access, scaffold and what affects the timescale

The New Town layout creates access problems you do not get elsewhere. Parking is frequently in communal courts or garage blocks rather than outside the house, rear elevations are often reached across shared land, and putting a scaffold up can need the freeholder's or the council's permission as well as yours. On the terraces and link blocks, work on one roof usually affects the neighbours either side, so we will want to talk to them early. Sorting all that out is a normal part of the job here and we will handle it, but it does mean Hemel jobs take longer to get started than the equivalent work in a village.