Roofers in Vale Of Glamorgan

Roofing in Vale Of Glamorgan

Guttering is the most commonly listed service across the Vale of Glamorgan, and that is not an accident. The county's older housing runs heavily to Victorian and Edwardian villas in Penarth and Barry and to substantial stone houses in Cowbridge and Llantwit Major, and a great many of them still carry their original cast iron rainwater goods. Cast iron outlasts everything when it is looked after and fails comprehensively when it is not: joints open, the back of the gutter rusts through where nobody looks, and water runs unseen down the wall behind it for years until the render blows or the wall plate rots.

The local stone gives the Vale its character. The blue-grey Lias limestone quarried along the Heritage Coast built most of Llantwit Major and the older Cowbridge streets, and those rubble-stone walls were built to breathe. Modern cement pointing and sealed render trap moisture in them, and damp that started at a blocked gutter gets blamed on rising damp instead. Cowbridge's Georgian high street and much of Llantwit sit within conservation areas, so roof and rainwater alterations on the older properties are not always a free choice.

Then there is the coast. The cliffs from Ogmore to Aberthaw take the full Bristol Channel weather, and Barry's Edwardian dock-boom terraces are exposed enough that ridge and verge mortar has a short working life.

The practical advice here is dull and effective. Clear and inspect gutters properly twice a year, insist on seeing the inside of a cast iron gutter before agreeing it needs replacing, and if you do replace, know that new cast iron or heritage aluminium will suit a Victorian villa far better than plastic and will last several times as long. Twenty-three firms serve the county with a strong 4.8 average across 672 reviews.