Slate Roof Repair in Windsor & Berkshire

Natural slate is stone. A good slate lasts for a century or more. The nails holding it do not. On older slate roofs across Windsor, Eton, Richmond and Twickenham, the iron nails rust through long before the slate wears out, and the slates start to slide. Roofers call it nail sickness.

The faults we repair on slate roofs every month:

• Slipped slates: a slate sitting lower than its neighbours, or a dark gap in a course
• Broken or cracked slates from frost, a falling branch or someone walking on the roof
• Nail sickness: slates slipping in several places at once as the fixings fail across a slope
• Worn valleys, where the lead or the cut slates along the valley have given up
• Failed flashings at chimneys and walls, which leak even when every slate is sound

Slates in the gutter or on the path, a gap you can see from the street or a damp patch in the top-floor ceiling all mean it is time for an inspection.

The worst slate repairs we see are the ones done with whatever was in the van: a fibre cement slate in a natural slate roof, a concrete tile pushed into a gap, or a slate glued in place with mastic. They stand out from the street, they do not weather the same way and most of them leak within a few years.

We repair natural slate in natural slate. Slates come in different sizes and thicknesses, and Welsh, Spanish and other slates differ in colour, so we match yours by measuring and checking a slate from your roof, not by guessing from the ground. On older roofs a reclaimed slate is often the closest match for colour and weathering.

When we find nail sickness right across a slope, we tell you straight. Tingling dozens of slates one at a time costs more over a few years than stripping the slope, re-felting, re-battening and re-slating it with copper nails, and we will price both so you can compare.