Slipped Tile Replacement in Windsor & Berkshire

Tiles do not slide down a roof on their own. Something underneath has let go. On the roofs we look at across Windsor and Berkshire it comes down to one of four things:

• Rusted nails: old fixings corrode through and the tile is left hanging on its nibs, ready to go in the next gale
• Snapped nibs: the small lugs on the back of a clay or concrete tile that hook over the batten break with age and frost
• Rotten or undersized battens: the timber rail the tile hangs on softens, splits or was never thick enough in the first place
• Wind lift: on exposed slopes a strong gust lifts a loose tile and drops it out of line

You will spot it from the ground as a gap in a course, a tile sitting lower than its neighbours or broken pieces in the gutter or on the path. Do not leave it. That gap puts rain straight onto the felt, and old felt was never meant to be the only thing keeping water out.

A replacement tile has to do two jobs: keep the water out, and sit in the roof as if it had always been there. Common concrete tiles are easy to match from current stock. Handmade clay tiles on a period house in Windsor, Eton or Richmond take more work, and we will source a reclaimed tile in the right colour and size rather than drop in the nearest modern one.

The profile matters as much as the colour. An interlocking tile has to lock into the tiles either side and below it, and a plain tile has to sit with the correct lap over the two courses beneath. Get that wrong and the tile looks fine but lets wind-driven rain in sideways. We fit it to the gauge of your existing roof, not to whatever is quickest.

Where the battens under a whole section are tired, we tell you, because new tiles on rotten timber will slip again however carefully they are fitted.