Bradford district · callouts 7 days0113 460 1042
Quote on paper Insured £5m 10-year guarantee Drone surveys
Roofing in Cottingley (BD16) from a firm working out of Bradford itself. Leaks traced back to where the water actually starts, stone slate re-fixed, stacks repointed in lime, gutters re-hung.
Stone terraces and later estate housing on the shoulder of the Aire valley, with the beck running down through the trees below. Cottingley is barely out of the city centre, so surveys and small jobs there get slotted in around bigger work on the same side of Bradford. Most calls from Cottingley start with a stain spreading on a ceiling or a slate lying in the yard. The next step is a free look at the whole roof, with the drone up wherever the pitch is too steep or too high to read from the ground.
Off, re-battened, breathable membrane, then a covering that suits the street. Stone slate, Welsh slate, clay or concrete.
What this covers →GRP, EPDM and torch-on felt over back extensions, dormers, mill outriggers and garages, laid to a fall that clears itself.
What this covers →Heavy gritstone slate on the old terraces, Welsh slate on the villas, tile on the estates. Matched, coursed and mechanically fixed.
What this covers →Soot-black gritstone stacks repointed in lime, rebuilt, re-flaunched, re-flashed. Take-downs below the slate line as well.
What this covers →Rotten boards stripped out, UPVC or timber in, eaves ventilation kept open, done while the gutter work is on the same scaffold.
What this covers →Storm damage and live leaks made safe across Bradford, the Aire valley and the Worth valley, callouts seven days a week.
What this covers →Cottingley sits on the shoulder of the valley between Bingley and Nab Wood, and its housing runs from stone terraces around the older village through to estate building of several different decades. The stone is local gritstone under stone slate or Welsh slate; the estates are concrete interlocking tile with the odd clay pantile roof among them. Because the ground falls away towards the beck, much of the property here is on a slope, with roofs at different levels, garages cut into banks and rear extensions stepped down. Those changes of level are where most of the leaks we get called to actually begin.
Junctions, in other words. Where a two-storey house meets a single-storey extension there should be a proper abutment with lead soakers and a cover flashing chased into a joint; what is often there instead is a mortar fillet that has cracked. Where a roof steps down there should be a lead saddle. Where a flat roof meets a pitched one, the upstand should carry high enough to stop wind-driven rain getting behind it, and frequently it does not. Chasing a Cottingley leak usually means following it back up a slope through two or three of those details rather than finding one slipped slate.
The beck side brings the other regular call. Ground below the village is wooded and damp, and the shaded north-facing pitches down there hold moss thickly enough to dam the laps and push water sideways under the covering. Moss on stone slate is worse than on tile, because the laps are wider and the stone stays wet for longer. Scraping it off and leaving the roof at that achieves nothing; the covering has to be checked for damage first and the gutters cleared afterwards, since most of what comes off ends up in them. Higher up, towards the moor road, exposure takes over and it is wind rather than shade that does the damage.
We are close by and in this part of BD16 regularly, so arranging a look at a roof in Cottingley is no trouble. The survey costs nothing, we photograph what we find including the junctions and flashings you cannot see from the ground, and the quote is itemised so you can separate the urgent from the eventual. Lead flashing and soaker renewal, valley and abutment work, stone slate and tile repairs, re-roofing, flat roofs on extensions, and gutters re-hung and re-falled. Fully insured with five million pounds of public liability and a ten-year written guarantee on our workmanship.
Stone houses around Cottingley carry heavy gritstone or Welsh slate on timbers that have held it for well over a century. What comes round again and again is slates split and crept after a hard frost, ridges bedded in cement that has cracked along the run, and lead torn at the fold where it was always going to go.
The terraced rows in Cottingley share a good deal more than a wall. The stack usually straddles the party line, and on the older streets the gutter runs the length of several houses, which is why a fault three doors down turns up in your back bedroom. We would rather see the whole run than one roof in isolation.
The modern estates around Cottingley are mostly interlocking concrete tile on dry-fix systems. The faults tend to be small, irritating and wind-related, and they get sorted with parts that match the rest of the roof.
The larger Victorian and Edwardian houses in Cottingley carry steep slate, tall multi-flue stacks and long lead valleys, and most of the trouble is in the lead rather than the slate. Flashings done on the cheap a generation ago, cracked soakers and open stack joints account for most of the calls.
Around Cottingley Moor Road, Cottingley Cliffe Road and the beck side is the part of Cottingley we know best, though the whole of it is on the round.
Sounds familiar? Ring 0113 460 1042 or ask for a survey. What you get back is a straight answer and a written price, not a sales visit.
Same van, same week: Nab Wood (BD18), Bingley, roofers in Saltaire, Gilstead, Sandy Lane and Wilsden. The full list runs the length of the Bradford district and Leeds.
The Aire valley, worked from Bradford — a few minutes out.
Phone or put the form in, whichever is easier. Free survey, written quote and a ten-year guarantee, the same across the whole of BD16.