Most of the roof repairs we carry out in Wilmington start in one of three places. A valley. A dormer cheek. The foot of a hip, where three lines of tiles meet a gutter. These houses carry a lot of roof, and the more corners a roof has, the more joints there are to wear out. The good news? Most of them can be fixed without touching anything else. We come out, check the roof and the loft, and find the actual point where water is getting in. Then you get a written price for fixing that, and only that. If the whole roof is tired we'll say so. Still, we'd much rather patch a sound roof on Hawley Road than talk someone into a new one they don't need.
A roofer rings you back to arrange a visit.
A repair is only as good as the diagnosis behind it. These habits stop us coming back for the same leak twice.
01
A flashing should be tucked into the brick joint, wedged and pointed. Sealant smeared over the top cracks within a couple of summers. On dormers and extension abutments we redo the lead properly, or explain why it can't be done on your wall.
02
A replacement should match in size, profile and colour as closely as we can manage. Up on Church Hill that matters for the conservation area as well as for how the house looks from the street.
03
A valley dripping at the bottom may be split near the top. We lift enough tiles to see the full run before deciding whether to patch it, re-line it in lead or fit a preformed liner.
04
Mortar alone holds a ridge or hip tile by its weight and the bond. One good gust breaks that bond. We add clips, screws or a dry-fix system where it suits the tile, so the next storm has less to grab hold of.
05
Damp timber, daylight through the felt, a wet patch on the insulation. The loft often tells us more than the outside does, so we look at both and photograph both.
06
Three slipped tiles over a porch is a real job and we treat it as one. Proper fixings, the right tile, a clean gutter when we leave. No pitch for a new roof tucked into the quote, and no minimum spend.
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
Size comes first. A semi with a hipped end, a rear extension and a dormer can have half a dozen separate roof planes, each meeting the next at a joint that depends on lead, mortar or a cut tile. Those joints age faster than the open slopes between them. So a roof that looks perfectly fine from Common Lane can still have one valley that's been letting in a cupful of water every wet week for a year.
Then there's wind. The open fields around the parish and the long corridor of the A2 give a gust plenty of room to build. Thames-side Kent sees about half the UK's average rainfall, so most of the leaks we trace here aren't caused by heavy rain at all. They appear when rain arrives sideways in a gale and gets driven under a loose verge, or behind a flashing that has lost its wedge.
If the survey shows the covering as a whole is past saving, our page on re-roofing in Wilmington explains what a full replacement involves on a house of this size.
"On Wilmington's hipped roofs, the slipped tile people spot from the garden is often the symptom, and a perished mortar bed further up the hip is the cause."
A stain on the bedroom ceiling, a tile in the flower bed, a drip in the loft after a windy night. The more you can tell us on the phone, the more useful our first visit will be.
We check slopes, hips, valleys and flashings from ladder height or with a camera pole. Then it's up into the loft with a torch to see where the water has actually tracked along the felt.
Water runs along battens and down rafters before it drops onto a ceiling, sometimes a surprising distance on a long hip. We follow that trail back to the point it got in, then photograph the spot so you can see it for yourself.
The quote names the repair, the materials and any access equipment needed. Where the house sits inside the Church Hill conservation area and the job alters anything visible, we flag that at this stage.
Ladder, tower or short scaffold, whichever suits the roof. The faulty section is opened up, fixed with matching tiles and proper lead or fixings, and closed again the same day wherever we can manage it.
On a semi, the hip or valley often runs right up to the party wall. We check the join with next door's roof, because a repair that stops dead at the boundary can leave a leak half-fixed. If their side needs work, we tell you rather than touching it.
Debris out of the gutters and the garden cleared. You then get a short set of photos showing the finished repair next to the before shot, so you know exactly what you paid for.
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 Wilmington 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.
On a large hipped roof the cost gap between a proper repair and a full replacement is wide. The table below shows when each one makes sense.
| 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 |
Small repairs here cost about the same as anywhere in Dartford. What changes the bill is access, and how many joints the job involves.
A gable end gives you a wall to lean on. A hip doesn't. On plenty of Wilmington houses a repair halfway up a slope needs a tower or scaffold, and that can cost more than the repair itself. We price it on its own line so you can see exactly where the money goes.
Re-lining a valley in lead is a bigger job than re-pointing a mortar valley, but it lasts far longer. Where both are possible we quote both and tell you which we'd choose for your roof, and why.
In the Church Hill conservation area, matching older materials can mean sourcing reclaimed tiles or slates instead of buying new. That adds time and sometimes cost. You'll hear about it before work starts, never halfway through.
A slipped tile fixed this month is usually a £180 to £450 job. Left through a winter, the water can rot the batten underneath and bring down part of a ceiling. Ridge re-bedding typically runs £450 to £1,200, so catching a loose ridge early is the cheaper route.
Almost never for a straightforward repair. Fixing a roof with matching materials doesn't change how it looks, so planning permission isn't needed. Dartford Borough Council is the planning authority for the whole parish. If you live in the Church Hill conservation area, or the house is listed, check with the council before changing materials or adding anything new to the roof. We'll raise it at the survey if it applies.
Because they work harder than any other part of the roof. Two slopes empty into one channel, so a valley handles a lot of water very quickly. Leaves and moss collect in it, old mortar edges crack, and lead linings fatigue where they were nailed too tightly. Bigger roofs mean longer valleys. Most can be repaired, though a badly split lining is better replaced.
We're based off Shepherds Lane on the Dartford Heath side, roughly four minutes away by car. We can't promise a time before we've spoken to you, but distance won't be what holds us up. If water is actually coming in, ring 01322 946667 rather than using the form.
Sometimes. If each patch fixed a separate fault and the tiles and battens are sound, more repairs are fine. If the same area keeps failing, or the felt underneath has gone brittle, you're paying repeatedly for something a re-roof would solve once. We'll show you the photos and give you both figures side by side.
Yes, in most cases. The usual culprits are the lead cheek flashings, the joint where the dormer roof meets the main slope, and the covering on top if it's flat. Each can be repaired on its own. If the cheeks are clad in something that has rotted behind, we'll show you, because that becomes a carpentry job too.
Grade I listed church at the top of Church Hill, with origins that go back before the Norman Conquest. The churchyard keeps a number of large table tombs and memorials.
Learn more about St Michael and All Angels Church on Google Maps
Grassland, orchards and footpaths laid out in 1999 on part of the old Darenth Park Hospital site, between Wilmington and Darenth. The hospital opened in 1878 and closed in 1988.
Learn more about Darenth Country Park on Google Maps
National Trust property at Sutton-at-Hone, about three miles south of Wilmington. The 13th-century chapel was built for the Knights Hospitaller, and the River Darent loops round the garden as a moat.
Learn more about St John's Jerusalem 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 Wilmington, 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.
Ring 01322 946667, Monday to Saturday between 8 and 6, or use the form. We'll come out, find the leak and send you a written price with photos.
