A new roof in Eye is a significant investment, and what you do in the months and years after the work is finished has a real effect on how long it performs without problems.
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A full roof replacement - stripping back to the rafters, renewing the felt and battens, laying new tiles or slates with properly fixed ridge work and new lead flashings - gives you a roof that should perform well for many years. But "many years" is not the same as "never needs attention again". Simple, low-cost maintenance carried out every few years catches the small issues before they become expensive ones. Most homeowners who end up needing another repair within five years of a replacement have missed something straightforward that could have been spotted early.
Before getting into aftercare, it helps to understand what a proper replacement includes, so you know what to look after. The work starts with stripping the old tiles, felt and battens down to the roof structure. Any damaged rafters, ridge boards or hip timbers are repaired or replaced. A new breathable membrane or roofing felt goes on, then treated timber battens, then the new tiles or slates. Ridge tiles are mechanically fixed - clipped or nailed rather than just bedded in mortar - and lead flashings are renewed at chimneys, wall abutments and valleys. A typical replacement on a semi-detached house in this part of Suffolk and South Norfolk costs roughly £5,000-£10,000 depending on size and specification.
After the first winter with a new roof, it's worth having a careful look from ground level - or from a safe viewpoint at an upstairs window - at the ridge line, hip tiles, chimney and any valleys. What you're looking for is anything that has visibly shifted or cracked during the freeze-thaw cycles of a cold winter. Mechanically fixed ridge tiles should not move, but it's still worth confirming they're sitting as they should. If anything looks out of place, get it looked at before it develops further.
Check the guttering too. A new roof can dislodge debris during stripping, and fragments of old mortar, pieces of tile and grit from new felt can accumulate in gutters and downpipes even when a contractor has made every effort to clear up. Blocked gutters cause water to back up against the fascia and sometimes behind it.
You do not need to go on the roof yourself. Most useful checks can be done from the ground using binoculars, or by looking into the loft space from inside. Do these once a year, ideally in autumn before the worst of the winter weather.
Some moss growth on a roof is normal and does not in itself cause immediate structural problems. The issue is that heavy moss holds moisture against the tile surface and, over time, can work into joints and crack tile edges during frost. It can also block the overlap between tiles, which is part of how a pitched roof sheds water.
If moss is building up significantly - particularly in north-facing or shaded areas - it's worth having it treated and removed. The right approach is a biocide treatment followed by careful removal of loose moss, not high-pressure washing. Power washing forces water up under the tiles and can disturb mortar bedding; it does far more harm than the moss itself on most roofs.
Lead flashings at chimney stacks, where a roof meets a wall, or in valleys are the most likely place for a problem to develop after a new roof is fitted. Good lead flashings, properly dressed and pointed into the masonry, should last for many years without attention. But pointing can shrink and crack, particularly where there is any movement in the chimney stack or brickwork, and when it does, water finds its way in at that joint.
Inspect the pointing around flashings visually from ground level once a year. If the mortar looks cracked or has pulled away from the wall, this is a job to deal with promptly. It is a small repair when caught early; if left, water tracking down behind the flashing leads to rot in the timber structure underneath it.
If you had your roof replaced recently and the chimney was left largely untouched, it's worth asking a roofer to inspect the stack separately. Cracked or spalling brickwork, failed chimney pointing and eroded chimney pots can all let water into the top of the stack, which then travels down inside the structure into the house. A redundant chimney that is no longer in use is often better capped off at the top to prevent this.
The roofline - the fascias, soffits and guttering - works alongside the roof to manage rainwater. Rotten timber fascias allow water to track back into the roof structure at the eaves. If your fascias were not replaced at the same time as the roof, check them regularly for paint failure, softness or gaps in the joints. uPVC fascias fitted at the time of a replacement generally need very little attention beyond keeping the gutters above them clear.
The checks listed above are all safe to carry out from the ground or from inside the loft. Going onto the roof yourself to investigate or fix something is not worth the risk. Roof tiles are not designed to take foot traffic and can crack or slip under weight; a fall from a roof at even single-storey level is a serious injury risk. If you spot something that looks wrong, call a roofer rather than attempting to fix it yourself.
If you are in Eye or the surrounding area and want a professional inspection of your roof - whether it was replaced recently or some years ago - call Diss Roofers and ask for a roof survey. Catching a small problem early is always cheaper than dealing with it once it's got into the timber.
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Call any time. Calls are answered day and night and passed straight to our roofers.
