Roof repairs and re-roofing in Ley Hill

Housing in Ley Hill

What the roofs here are like

Ley Hill is a small village on high ground east of Chesham, arranged around its common and golf course. The older core is a modest scatter of brick-and-flint and rendered cottages with steep tiled pitches, some of them peg-tiled and several with catslide roofs at the rear where an outshot was added long ago. Around and between them sits a good deal of 20th-century detached housing - interwar, postwar and a fair amount of 1960s and 1970s building - mostly plain concrete tile on straightforward gable or hip roofs. Plot sizes are generous and a high proportion of properties have detached garages, outbuildings and garden rooms, which between them account for a lot of small flat roofs.

What we get called out for

The problems that come up in Ley Hill

Ley Hill is exposed compared with Chesham down in the valley, and that shows in the work: wind damage to ridges and verges comes up more often here than a mile away. The other constant is the flat roofs - garages, extensions and garden rooms of every vintage, a lot of them still on original felt long past its life, and a lot of them ponding because the falls were never right. Being on the common and surrounded by trees, moss on north slopes is a steady job too. Access is generally easy, which keeps scaffold costs down compared with the terraces in town.

Working in Ley Hill

Access, scaffold and what affects the timescale

Easy village to work in - open plots, room for a scaffold lorry to turn, and parking on your own drive rather than the road. The thing we plan around here is weather rather than access. Ley Hill sits high and exposed, so we will not lay GRP or torch-on felt on a windy or cold day, and we would rather move a flat roof date by a week than lay a covering that will not cure properly. Wind damage callouts here cluster after the winter storms, and if you are on the common side of the village it is worth checking your ridge after a bad night.