Roof repairs and re-roofing in Rickmansworth

Housing in Rickmansworth

What the roofs here are like

Rickmansworth sits where the Chess, Gade and Colne meet, and it grew from a small market town into a substantial commuter town after the Metropolitan Railway arrived. The old High Street retains Georgian and Victorian buildings under tile and slate, some listed. Around it, and dominating the town, is Metroland housing - extensive 1920s and 1930s semi-detached and detached development on curving roads, with hipped and gabled tiled roofs, bay windows carrying their own small roofs, and tile-hung or rendered upper storeys. Postwar estates fill the higher ground, and there has been considerable modern development around the Aquadrome and the former gravel workings, including apartment blocks with flat and shallow-pitched roofs.

What we get called out for

The problems that come up in Rickmansworth

The interwar Metroland stock is what we mostly work on here, and it comes with a very consistent set of problems: bay roofs in lead that have reached the end of their life, mortar-bedded ridges and hips well past the twenty to thirty years they get, and tile-hung elevations where the battens behind have rotted. The rivers and the Aquadrome make the low-lying parts of the town damp and treed, so gutter clearing and moss removal are steady work down there. Newer apartment schemes bring flat roofing enquiries of a different kind, usually about ponding or failed outlets rather than the covering itself.

Working in Rickmansworth

Access, scaffold and what affects the timescale

On-street parking is the main constraint across the Metroland streets, and in the town centre permits and scaffold licences apply. Most interwar houses have a drive, but they are short, and a scaffold across the frontage will usually take it out for the duration - worth planning if you need the car. Down near the Aquadrome and the rivers the ground is soft, and scaffold on wet ground needs proper bases rather than being stood straight on the lawn. Because so much of the housing here follows the same interwar pattern, we can price bay roofs and ridge work quickly and accurately from a look and a photograph.