roof repairs and guarantees

[Katherty]

Hello, I was wondering if others have had experience of roof repairs and guarantees.

A while back, we had a water leak come through in our top floor room.  A roofer came and went out on the roof to take a look - they said it was to do with a leak near the chimney.   They did some rendering around the chimney and this cost £1800 plus £750 for scaffolding (so £2,550 total).  They said the work came with a 10 year guarantee.

About a year later, there was another leak on the same wall, which looked exactly the same size and colour as the previous leak. But it was about 2 metres away from it, on the other side of a window. 

I contacted the roofer about this new leak, thinking it would be covered by the guarantee. However, he said the new leak was due to a different and unrelated problem, and so was not covered by the guarantee.

This new leak, he said, was due to holes in the felt underneath the tiles. He said there are holes in the felt all over the roof (so if this was the cause, I expect the first leak may have been caused by that too - but he didn't mention the holes in the felt for the first repair).

It feels like the 10-year guarantee doesn't mean much at all.  I realise that the guarantee couldn't cover all future problems with the roof, but where do you draw the line with what's reasonable?  Is it that a leak is only covered if an identical leak happens in exactly the same place?  There were no terms and conditions with the guarantee, which I didn't question at the time.  

[RubyGraeme]

Get a different roofer

 

[Jenijenjen]

Perhaps first leak was caused by a combination of faulty rendering and a hole in the felt so re-rendering was able to fix it. This course of action wouldn't solve your current problem, it does sound like a separate issue. His guarantee would only cover the rerendering not any hole in the felt.

Sorry this isn't what you want to hear.

[Dulwichlass]

Hey, I am on the first floor and I am directly impacted if roof leaks. We got a roofing company to do repair work which was supposed to be guaranteed. However, when it started leaking again, we were informed that the guarantee is just for a new roof and not repair work. Each time the company that did the repair work came out again over the next few years, we had to pay additional amounts. The roof continues to leak, so I have just organised another company to fix the roof instead, as the guarantee doesn't mean anything. 

Edited yesterday at 10:20 by Dulwichlass

[tropica]

I agree with Jenjenjen. Guarantees are provided for works and services actually carried out; they are not an insurance policy for leaks anywhere else on the roof. Assuming that the rendering at the chimney stopped the leak that you asked the roofer to repair, then the guarantee will cover that rendering work. Indeed, if at some time in the future it leaked again at that exact same spot but by another cause, that would not be covered. Failure of rendering around a chimney is pretty common so, if re-rendering did resolve that leak, there is no particular reason to link it to the holes in the felt elsewhere across the roof. 

[Katherty]

Thanks all for the replies.  When the roofer come to look at the roof more recently,  there were holes in the felt in the same place that the original leak had been,  as well as where the new leak is.  There doesn't seem to be a reason why a hole the the felt was the cause of one leak and not the other.  It would have been good to have got everything sorted at the same time,  rather than having to put scaffolding up again. 

But my main issue is around the vagueness of a 10 year guarantee.  After work was done the first time,  the roofer gave us a summary of the work and just wrote '10 Yr guarantee' after, without specifying what exactly that means.  

If a roofer comes and doesn't diagnose the problem quite right (which i imagine is common with roofs, given it's not always clear what's causing a leak), the guarantee doesn't seem to apply.

But anyway,  we'll be getting a different roofer, because we think he should have checked the felt under the tiles the first time round.