Find a Roofer you can trust in Dunmow.

Chimneys are certainly on top of the commonly overlooked features when it comes to cleaning a house. This is quite understandable given the fact that they’re not readily accessible and not in plain sight, hence, home and property owners tend to overlook the relevance of any chimney cleaning effort. But this can be a grave mistake! The importance of having your chimney swept on a regular basis cannot be over emphasized and even more so if it happens to be on a wood burner. Not only can a dirty chimney constitute fire hazard, but when left uncleaned it can also give rise to blockages which can lead to carbon monoxide poisoning. In fact, from 2014 to 2018, one of the top factors contributing to about 25% of home heating fires is due to lack of cleaning, mainly from solid-fueled heating equipment, mostly chimneys. Therefore, sweeping your chimney regularly is a safety precaution and when they happen to be on a wood burner, this exercise becomes a lot more important. With that in mind, the question that arises is just how often is sweeping of a chimney on a would burner needed?

Well, it’s strongly advisable to sweep chimney on a wood burner at least twice a year by a qualified professional depending on the usage. If you happen to own an oil burning fireplace, the same also applies. In other words, this means that regardless of the type of chimney you possess, the cleaning must be done regularly. However, most chimney would only need to be swept once in a year by a qualified professional.

What Is The Average Cost To Replace A Flat Roof?

Are you interested in knowing how much it costs to replace a flat roof? Here, you’ll discover a price breakdown for replacing flat roof. This includes a number of price determining factors such as materials costs as well as cost of labour and cost per square metre. All these enables you to make easy calculations so that you can determine a flat roof replacement estimate for your own project.

The type of flat roof that is the most common type is the garage roof and for the replacement of a single garage roof, the cost will fall between the range of £700 to £1000. Meanwhile for a double garage, you should expect a price increase of about 40 percent to 50 percent. The main price determinant that’s affecting the price of a new flat roof is the material incorporated in making it. For instance, lead or fibreglass are much more expensive when compared to felt roofs.

Generally, the cost of a flat roof replacement will fall within the range of £700 to £1300 varying largely due to the type of materials to be used by the roofer, the roof’s size as well as whether or not scaffolding would be used. Multiple flat roof applications also comes with different costs which includes:

• Felt roof ( £40 to £60 per square metre).

• Fibreglass roof ( £70to £90 per square metre ).

• Rubber roof ( £80 to £85 per square metre ).

• Lead bay roof ( £90 to £105 per square metre ).

• Fibreglass bay roof ( £40 to £60 per square metre ).

Several professional roofers work in pairs and to hire them you’re likely to be charged between £200 to £300 per day. The project can be completed with just a day’s work, but the installer should be back to make sure there are no leaks.

How To Clean Concrete Roof Tiles

Dirt, moss and algae usually sees concrete roof tiles as the perfect place to reside. They can damage the structural bonds of your roof, they can lead to overheating of the attic and roof space as well as blocked gutters. In order to protect the structural integrity of your roof and ensure your home and properties are well protected against the elements, it’s therefore crucial to clean your roof regularly. There are plethora of ways to go about this but which method will best suit your concrete roof tile?

When it comes to working at heights, skill and confidence is paramount even if the actually cleaning and maintenance happens to be an easy task. As a result, if you lack the two attributes mentioned, we’d strongly recommend that you call in a professional roof cleaning contractor who can guarantee the best results for help. In this article, we aim to give you a good insight into the concrete roof tiles cleaning process. Let’s have a look!

✓ Use a trowel or stiff brush

This is a manual method which involves scraping off the algae, moss and dirt by hand using an effective tool like a trowel. However, before you do this make sure its a very dry day. Also, you can make use of a stiff brush to scrape off the dirt. Both cleaning tools are very easy and effective means to clean concrete roof tiles.

✓ Use chemicals

You can apply fungicide, moss killers and anti moss treatments with the help of a spray to kill any plant life on your concrete roof tiles. However, you should only do this after you’ve successfully scraped the surface with a trowel or a stiff brush.

Replacement of roof tiles that have fractured, cracked or is missing is vital to avoid roof leaks and ceiling damage once rain and wind appear. Countering the problem swiftly by yourself is probable as long as it's only a few tiles. Charges for tile replacement can be expensive and fluctuate conditional on the company you hire.

The steps to replacing a tile are:

Ensure you have the right replacement tile as there are numerous different roof tiles on the market.

The most common types of roof tiles are concrete and terracotta. You must confirm that the tile is identical to your earlier tile or it may not work and can result in impairment even though you've tried to repair it. If you don't know what the tile is, ask the suggestion of a roofing supplier and they should be able to match it for you.

Get onto the roof.

It is only advisable to do this if the safety is guaranteed, using a steady ladder and maybe even using climbing ropes to protect you in case of a fall. If you don't possess a head for altitudes or you're sceptical about how safe it is for you to get on the roof, call in a professional.

Once you have securely gotten to the cracked tile, you'll want to somewhat lift the tiles that overlay the one to be detached. Do this by means of two pieces of timber to hold them up. Lift the broken tile over the baton with a brick trowel and gently slide it down.

Place your new tile on top of the brick trowel and inverse the steps to remove the tile.

Be certain to place the overlying tiles back into place.

Conduct a fast check across the roof to review any other possible damage. It is always advised to keep update on how the roof is holding out to keep an eye out for other tiles that might need replacing.

Gutters are a crucial component of any roofing system. They’re designed in such a way to protect your home or property from serious water damage, but keeping them clean and in good condition is something that’s almost always forgotten or ignored. Do not be deceived even when rain water is still running from them or they don’t appear to be clogged. Failure to clean maintain your gutters can lead to a wide range of outcomes and they aren’t so pretty. According to experts, gutter cleaning should be done twice a year - once in the spring and once in the fall. In order to help you realize the importance of cleaning your gutters, we’ll look at some of the possible outcomes of a neglected gutter.

• Leaky roof. If your gutters get clogged and cannot move water away from your home, it begins to build up on the roof and eventually lead to damages like rot and mold. As the damages spread, the end result could be a severe damage to the attic and supports.
• Damaged foundation. If the gutters are not functioning as they should, water saturation becomes a great threat to the foundation of your home or property. The concrete will crack or wood rots and you can also end up with mold.
• Creepy crawler infestation. Wherever you have stagnant water, there are also bugs. This is because they love the wet and moisture-filled gutters. You get unwanted visitors like carpenter ants, roaches and mosquitoes, just to mention a few.
• Driveway and path damage. When the downspouts aren’t directing the water to the appropriate spot, the excess that comes in contact with these surfaces can lead to cracks or sagging.

Roof tiles should be replaced as soon as possible to ensure that your roof stays waterproof. Use crawl boards when replacing them to avoid damaging other tiles, if not ask a qualified roofer to carry out the work, particularly if the tiles are higher up.

A Velux window is a brand of roof window, but the brand is so popular that people often use the name to describe the entire type of window. They are windows that are installed at the same orientation and ‘in plane’ with the surrounding roof, and they’re usually installed at a minimum of a 15-degree pitch. You can buy roof windows that offer completely frameless internal views for a really clean look in your loft conversion, while some come with built-in shutters.

Velux windows aren’t to be confused with rooflights which usually refers to a glazed unit that’s installed on a flat roof. It might also mean a window that’s been installed on a pitched roof out of plane with the level of the tiling.

People also confuse roof windows with skylights, which normally can’t be opened or closed and are usually smaller than Velux windows. Skylights, therefore, only let daylight into the room whereas roof windows also help with ventilation.

If you’re using your loft as a room in your home rather than simply for storage, you must have a roof window installed. Skylights won’t be enough as they don’t allow for ventilation. It doesn’t have to be a Velux window – it can be any type of roof window. Luckily, they tend to come in standard sizes and they must be CE marked if they’re sold as a roof window, so they should be easy to find.

Chimney liners are a very important component of the chimney, but the fact is most home and property owners either continue to overlook them or aren’t even aware of their existence. This is, however, quite understandable given the fact that they usually last a long period of time – more than 50 years. To ensure that they last that long, the question that arises is, do chimney liners need to be swept and cleaned? The short and simple answer to this question is yes, chimney liners definitely needs to be cleaned on a frequent basis. A chimney liner happens to be an essential part of your chimney. When it’s not cleaned, it tends to accumulate dust, soot and dirt which can give rise to a number of problems you’d rather want to avoid. Chimney liner are able to provide adequate protection to your flue but even at that the water, creosote and other contaminant build up can make the liner to deteriorate, and making it unsafe for usage. In other words, contrary to several belief, chimney liners do need the same amount of cleaning as chimneys without liners. Failure to sweep your chimney liners can give rise to the following problems:

• Creosote buildup. If your main source of fire is wood, then you’ll definitely have creosote present in your chimney. This is highly combustible and its buildup may lead to fire outbreak.
• Carbon monoxide poisoning. Carbon monoxide is said to be on the rise by NCBI and its primarily generated from heating systems which are terribly ventilated as a result of uncleaned or dirty chimneys.