Roofers in North Ayrshire

Roofing in North Ayrshire

North Ayrshire faces straight into the prevailing south-westerly, and almost everything about its roofs follows from that. Largs, Saltcoats and Ardrossan take wind and salt spray off the Firth of Clyde with very little shelter, and the council area also takes in Arran and Cumbrae, where a roofing job means ferry crossings for materials, for scaffolding and for the crew. That is worth raising at quote stage rather than discovering it in the final price.

The building stock splits three ways. Victorian and Edwardian seaside villas and tenements in Largs and Saltcoats, with slate, dormers and a good deal of leadwork. Older sandstone terraces and cottages inland at Beith, Dalry and Kilwinning. And then Irvine, designated a new town in 1966, which brought a large cohort of flat-roofed, mono-pitch and shallow-pitch housing built through the late sixties and seventies. Those flat roofs are now well past the life of their original felt, and the honest answer is usually a full strip and re-cover in single-ply membrane or EPDM rather than another overlay on top of saturated insulation.

It is telling that guttering is the most commonly advertised service among the 39 firms listed here, level with roof repairs. On this coast rainwater goods do the heavy lifting: high annual rainfall, gutters that fill fast, and salt air that eats brackets and fixings. If water is running down a wall, check the gutter line and the joints before assuming the covering has failed. And anywhere exposed, specify stainless or plastic-coated fixings throughout, because ordinary galvanised steel will not last here.