Tile roof restoration across the Inner West and beyond Ashfield

What restoration actually is, and what it is not

A tile roof restoration is a repair to the mortar work and the tiles, finished with a protective coating. The order matters. The money is in the bedding and pointing under the ridge and hip caps — not in the colour that goes on last.

A roof sprayed over crumbling pointing looks excellent for about a year and leaks the whole time. If a quote is mostly about the coating, it is a paint job wearing a roofing word.

Call (02) 8000 1103 for a free assessment of whether your roof is a candidate.

What is included

1. Pressure clean. Moss, lichen, accumulated grime and loose material removed so the tiles can be seen and assessed.
2. Clear the valleys and gutters. Leaf litter out of valley irons and eaves gutters, which is where rust starts.
3. Replace broken and chipped tiles. Matched where matching stock exists; on older terracotta that can take some sourcing.
4. Rebed ridge and hip caps. Caps lifted, old mortar removed, caps relaid on fresh bedding to the correct line.
5. Repoint. A flexible pointing compound over the bedding, which moves with the roof instead of cracking straight off it.
6. Reseal or replace flashings. Valleys, penetrations, and the junction with any wall or parapet.
7. Coat. Primer and membrane coats for colour, to shed water off the tile face and slow the re-growth of moss.
8. Clean up. Debris removed, gutters cleared, site left tidy.

When restoration is the wrong call

It is worth being direct about this, because restoration gets sold to people who should be spending the money elsewhere.

• You have slate. Restoration coatings do not belong on slate. The right work there is reslating, lead flashing and individual slate replacement — see roof replacement.
• Your roof is a terrace with box gutters. The leak on that house is almost never the tile field. It is the box gutter, the parapet or the shared junction, which is gutter work or a targeted repair.
• The structure has gone. Springy battens, rotten rafter ends or a sagging line mean the covering is not the problem.
• The tiles are delaminating. Terracotta that is flaking and crumbling across whole slopes will not hold a coating, and replacing half of them is a re-roof by another name.
• You are selling in six weeks. A coating applied over unresolved faults will show up in the buyer's roof inspection report.

Which parts of the area this suits

The Inner West splits roughly in two for this kind of work. The attached Victorian terrace belt through Newtown, Erskineville, Balmain and Annandale is largely slate and box gutters, so restoration mostly does not apply.

West and south of Ashfield it is a different story. Inter-war and Federation tiled roofs dominate Dulwich Hill, Summer Hill, Croydon, Croydon Park, Burwood, Concord and Five Dock. On the ridges above the Cooks River at Earlwood, Canterbury and Hurlstone Park the post-war and inter-war tiled stock is exactly what restoration was designed for.

Two local conditions shape the work there. Established street trees drop a continuous leaf load into valleys and gutters, keeping them wet. And the dense roofscape means short, intense downpours arrive faster than the drainage can clear them, so a roof that is already holding water in its valleys gets tested hard.

Heritage and colour

If your roof sits in a conservation area, the colour you recoat it is not entirely a matter of taste. The councils covering these suburbs — Inner West, Burwood, Strathfield, Canada Bay and Canterbury-Bankstown — all apply conservation area controls through their LEPs and development control plans, and finish and colour on a street-visible roof can be among them. Strathfield lists around 17 conservation areas under Schedule 5 of the Strathfield LEP 2012, with Federation Queen Anne character noted in the Churchill Avenue, Homebush Road and Redmyre Road areas.

In practice: muted heritage tones in a low-sheen finish are the safe ground, and we check what applies to your address before recommending a colour.

Weather, drying time and how long it takes

Restoration is weather-dependent in a way repairs are not. Cleaning needs the roof to dry before coating, and coating needs a dry window to cure. A run of humid, showery days stretches the programme, and pushing coating onto a damp roof is how a finish fails early.

A typical single-storey tiled roof is a small number of working days spread over a slightly longer calendar window to allow for that. The quote states the programme and does not pretend the weather is controllable.

What changes the price

Roof area and pitch, the number of ridge and hip metres to rebed, how many replacement tiles are needed and how hard they are to match, access, the amount of moss and debris to remove, and whether flashings and valleys need work as well. The written quote follows the free inspection and itemises it.

Book a free roof assessment

Work is carried out by established, licensed and insured roofing contractors working to NSW Fair Trading requirements, with a written workmanship warranty on completed work.

Call (02) 8000 1103 or request a free quote. The full suburb list is on the service areas page.