Most roof repairs in Stone start the same way: a brown ring on a bedroom ceiling, or a tile found face down on the path after a windy night. We fix those. Tiles, ridges, lead, valleys, the felt at the eaves. Stone throws a couple of extra problems at a roof. Houses along London Road and towards the A282 pick up a layer of traffic grime that hides small cracks until they turn into leaks. And the open ground towards the river lets the wind get at ridges and verges. Our roofers come out from Chastilian Road in west Dartford, look properly, and show you photographs of the actual fault. If a few tiles will sort it, a few tiles is what you pay for.
A roofer rings you back to arrange a visit.
A good repair finds the cause, not just the wet patch. These are the habits that make that happen on Stone roofs.
01
Water rarely drips where it gets in. It runs along a batten or down a rafter first, sometimes a metre or more. We follow it back from inside the loft and from the roof, so the fix lands on the real fault and not on the stain.
02
On houses close to the A226, lead and mortar fillets are often coated in a dark film. Under it you can find a split, or a wedge that's worked loose. We clean the suspect bits and check by hand rather than guessing from how it looks.
03
Stone's mix of post-war and newer homes means tile profiles vary from street to street. We match the shape and colour as closely as the market allows and clip or nail them in the way the original roof was designed to work.
04
Cracked ridge mortar is one of the commonest repairs we do here. Where re-bedding in mortar makes sense, we use the right mix. Where wind exposure is a worry, we'll talk you through a mechanically fixed dry ridge instead.
05
Valleys collect everything the roof sheds: moss, leaves, grit. Once that dam builds up, water spills over the side of the valley and under the tiles. Clearing and re-pointing a valley is cheap compared with replacing the timbers it soaks.
06
You can't see your own roof. So we photograph the fault before and the repair after, and send them over. If anything else caught our eye while we were up there, you'll hear about it, with no pressure to act on it now.
1,000+
Roofs repaired, renewed and rebuilt
10 yrs
Written guarantee on every re-roof
5★
The only rating anyone has left us
£0
For the survey and the written quote
London Road runs right through Stone, and between Swanscombe and the A282 it's a declared air-quality management area for nitrogen dioxide. Homes facing it, and those near the tunnel approach, collect a grey-black layer on gutters, rooflights and lead. It's mainly cosmetic. But on a dirty roof a cracked mortar fillet looks almost identical to a sound one, and a lifted flashing edge blends straight into the brickwork. That's why we never price a repair on a quick glance from the ground.
The other half of the picture is the age mix. Stone grew into a suburb after the war and has kept growing, close to doubling its population between 2005 and 2021. So a Horns Cross semi with decades on its roof can sit near houses that went up far more recently. Each needs its own approach to a fix: different tiles, different fixings, sometimes a different membrane underneath. We bring the right materials for the house in front of us.
If the survey shows the battens and felt are past saving, our page on re-roofing in Stone covers what a full replacement involves and what it's likely to cost.
"When we're called to a Stone leak by a busy road, the fault is often a flashing or fillet that looked fine from the ground because the dirt was covering the crack."
Phone 01322 946667 or use the form. Where's the stain? When does it drip, in every shower or only in driving rain? Those two answers narrow things down a lot before we arrive.
If you'll let us into the loft, we start there. Daylight through the tiles, wet timber or a tide mark on the felt tells us where to head when we get on the roof. It saves lifting tiles that don't need lifting.
Then we go up and check the likely culprits around that spot: tiles, ridge, flashing, valley, the gutter edge. Grime gets cleaned off anything suspicious so we're judging the actual mortar and lead.
You get photos and a written price for the repair, with VAT shown. Small jobs can often be done on the same visit if you're happy with the figure. Larger ones get booked in at a time that works for you.
For a single-storey lean-to, ladders and roof ladders may be all we need. Higher work gets a tower or scaffold. Along London Road we think about the pavement and parked cars before anything goes up.
Broken tiles replaced and fixed, mortar raked out and re-bedded, lead re-dressed and re-wedged, or a valley cleared and re-pointed. We use materials that suit your roof's age and type, not whatever was left in the van.
Once the repair is done we look at it again, clear up any debris, and send you before-and-after pictures. If the leak was inside, we'll tell you how long the ceiling should take to dry out before you decorate.
10
Years' cover on a new roof
1,000+
Roofing jobs finished
Paperwork in your hand on the last day. Not posted out "in due course".
Re-roof a house in Stone with us and you get 10 years of cover on the workmanship. It's a written document. It has your address on it, lists what was done, and is dated the day the roof is signed off. If water gets in because something was fitted wrong - a batten, a fixing, a lap, a flashing - a roofer comes back and puts it right. You don't pay for that.
Why are we happy to promise ten years? Because of how the roof goes on. Every tile or slate is mechanically fixed to BS 5534, the current British Standard. Ridges and hips are fixed too, not just sat in mortar. A breathable membrane goes down first. Where a roof meets a wall, a chimney or the house next door, it gets proper lead or a tested dry system. Shortcuts there are what make a guarantee expensive, so we don't take them.
Tiles, slates and membranes also carry the maker's own warranty. Those vary by product, and your paperwork tells you which ones apply. If a job is too unusual to guarantee in the normal way, you'll hear that at quote stage.
Most Stone roofs we look at are worth repairing. The table below sets the two options side by side, so you can see where a repair stops making sense on an older post-war roof and a full replacement starts to earn its cost.
| Comparison point | Targeted repair | Patch-and-seal | Partial re-roof | Full re-roof |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Typical cost | £180 - £1,600 depending on the fault | Low, often under £200 | Several thousand, priced by area | £8,000 - £24,000+ by house size |
| How long it lasts | As long as the roof around it, if done right | Months, sometimes a year or two | Decades on the renewed slope | Typically 50+ years, depending on covering |
| Disruption | A few hours from a ladder or tower | An hour or two | Scaffold on one side for several days | Full scaffold, roughly one to two weeks |
| When it makes sense | Sound roof with one clear fault | Stopgap until a proper repair | One slope failed, the other still sound | Battens, felt and fixings failing everywhere |
| Paperwork you get | Written quote, photos and a note of the work | Usually nothing worth keeping | Written quote, building control if over the limits | Written quote and our 10 year guarantee |
| Building regulations | Not needed | Not needed | Needed past 50% of the roof or 25% of the envelope | Building control approval normally required |
These are typical figures for Stone. Your written quote will give an exact price once we've been on the roof.
A couple of slipped tiles is a quick job, usually £180-450. If the nails holding a whole slope have rusted through, tiles will keep sliding one by one, and the honest answer is a bigger repair or a re-roof. We'll tell you which you're facing.
A house with a back garden we can reach easily costs less to work on than a frontage on the A226, where scaffold has to be planned around the pavement and the traffic. Tall gables and lean-to conservatories underneath also add time.
Re-bedding or re-fixing a full ridge usually comes in at £450-1,200, depending on its length and whether hips are involved. Switching to a dry-fix system sits towards the upper end but needs less upkeep afterwards. For a ridge that catches the wind off the open ground towards the river, we think it's usually worth it.
Re-dressing a flashing is fairly cheap. Replacing a run of lead around a chimney or abutment costs more because of the material. Near the busy roads we often find that cleaning reveals more damage than first appeared, so we build that possibility into the quote.
No, not for a normal repair. Fixing tiles, ridges or flashings like for like doesn't change how your house looks, so Dartford Borough Council, which handles planning for Stone, wouldn't expect an application. Stone has no conservation area on the national dataset. The exception would be a listed building, such as St Mary the Virgin on the hill, where even small repairs can need consent.
Not much on its own. The grime from London Road and the A282 sits on the surface. The real problem is what it hides: cracks in mortar and splits in lead are harder to spot under a dark film, and the grit adds weight to the sludge in gutters. Regular gutter clearing and a proper look at the flashings every few years deal with most of it.
Most small repairs fall between £180 and £450, things like replacing slipped or cracked tiles. Ridge work runs higher, typically £450-1,200. Lead repairs vary with how much new lead is needed. Access matters too: a house set back from the road is cheaper to work on than one on the London Road pavement. We'll give you a fixed written price after the free survey.
Yes. Most semis and terraces in Stone share a roof line, and a repair on your side is fine as long as we don't need to disturb next door's tiles or the party wall. If the fault sits right on the boundary, or a shared chimney stack is the problem, it's worth talking to your neighbour first. The government's Party Wall Act booklet explains when formal notice is needed.
Sometimes. If the tiles, battens and felt are mostly sound, another targeted repair is still good value. If each repair is a different fault in a different place, it usually means the whole roof is reaching the end, and you're paying to chase it. We'll show you photos of the general condition, not just the leak, so you can decide.
Grade I listed church rebuilt between about 1251 and 1271, with stone carving often linked to the masons of Westminster Abbey. Its tower was once lit as a beacon for shipping, which earned it the name the Lantern of Kent.
Learn more about St Mary the Virgin, Stone on Google Maps
Dartford Borough Council park off Dawes Close in Stone, with open grass, a children's play area and outdoor gym equipment. From the higher ground there are views north towards the Thames.
Learn more about Worcester Park on Google Maps
Playing field between London Road and Hayes Road, edged by lines of mature trees. The Stone Pavilion, a hall used for local clubs and functions, stands beside it.
Learn more about Stone Recreation Ground on Google MapsEvery review left for us so far has been five stars. We're adding them here as they come in.
Reviews only tell you so much anyway. When a roofer comes out to Stone, ask to see photos of a recent job on a house like yours. A good roofer will have plenty and won't mind you asking.
A small fault caught now costs far less than wet timbers later. Book a free roof survey and we'll show you exactly what's wrong.
