Roofers in Midlothian

Roofing in Midlothian

Midlothian's housing carries the fingerprint of the Lothian coalfield. Newtongrange, Mayfield, Bilston and Loanhead grew around pits, and their miners' rows and 1920s to 1950s colliery housing were built quickly and to a budget, most of it re-roofed once already in concrete tile. Add Dalkeith's Georgian High Street and conservation area, Penicuik's papermaking terraces, and the very large new estates at Shawfair and around Bonnyrigg, and you have three quite different roofing markets inside one small county.

Altitude is the thing outsiders miss. The ground rises steadily from Dalkeith toward the Moorfoots, and Penicuik and the villages above it hold frost and lying snow days after Edinburgh has thawed. Repeated freeze-thaw is hard on cement mortar, on porous ridge tiles and on any slate already softened by age, and it is why a roof five miles inland can look years older than an identical one nearer the coast.

On the new-build side the problems are different and mostly about workmanship rather than weather. Dry-fix ridge and verge systems fitted without the correct clips, valleys formed too tightly, and abutment flashings chased in too shallow are the usual suspects, and they surface in the first few winters rather than the first few decades. Midlothian's 35 listed firms carry more than 1,200 reviews between them at an average of 4.8, which reflects a competitive market on Edinburgh's doorstep. Use that. Get three quotes, and on a period slate roof ask specifically whether the existing slate is to be re-used or replaced wholesale, because the answers, and the prices, differ enormously.