Roofers in Aberdeen City

Roofing in Aberdeen City

Granite gives Aberdeen a particular set of roofing problems. The walls themselves are close to indestructible, so water almost never gets in through the stone; it gets in at the joints, the skews, the leadwork and the chimney heads. The granite terraces and tenements across Rosemount, Torry and the West End were built with Scots slate over sarking, tight skew copes and tall stacks carrying multiple flues, and it is those details, not the fabric, that fail.

The exposure here is unusual for Britain. Aberdeen takes its worst driving rain from the east, straight off the North Sea, backed by haar and salt. Anything on an east elevation, a verge, a dormer cheek, a stack, weathers noticeably faster than the identical detail on the sheltered side of the same building. That asymmetry is a useful diagnostic: if damp keeps appearing on one side of the house, look hard at the exposed elevation before you start lifting slates elsewhere.

Two other cohorts matter. The flat roofs on 1960s and 1970s blocks around the city, many now on their second or third covering, and the oil-era housing built from the seventies onwards in concrete interlocking tile, where mortar bedding at ridges and verges is generally the weak point. Fifteen of the 36 firms listed in Aberdeen offer emergency call-out, a notably high proportion, which is what you would expect somewhere storms arrive hard and often. Twenty-one list roof repairs and eleven list slate work, so genuine granite-and-slate experience is available if you ask for it by name.