Concrete Tile Roofs in Basingstoke
Roof repairs, new roofs and roofline work across north Hampshire. Free surveys, fixed written quotes, tidy workmanship.
Basingstoke Roofing Company works on concrete tile roofs across Basingstoke every week — repairing them, re-fixing them, converting mortar ridges to dry ridge, and replacing them when the tiles themselves are finished. If your house went up between 1960 and 1990, this is almost certainly what you are standing under.
Concrete interlocking tile was the covering of the overspill era: cheap, quick to lay, and usable down to shallow pitches that clay and slate cannot manage. It was a sound choice. It also came with a service life, and across large parts of the town that life is now being used up.
The tiles on Basingstoke's roofs
Marley Ludlow Major
The single most common interlocking tile on the estates. Single-lap, deep bold roll, usable to 15° with the right underlay. Still made, so matches are straightforward.
Redland 49 and Redland Regent
Redland's contemporaries of the same period. The 49 in particular turns up all over the 1960s and 70s housing. Direct equivalents remain available.
Marley Modern
The flat-profile alternative, common on 1970s and 80s builds and on later Chineham housing. Reads as a slate-ish roof from the street.
Redland Stonewold
A slate-look concrete tile, heavier than most. Worth checking the rafters before like-for-like replacement.
Sandtoft Standard Pattern
Less common here, but it appears on infill and later phases. Reclaimed stock fills most gaps where a profile has been discontinued.
How concrete tiles actually wear out
A concrete tile is sand, cement and pigment. The pigment is only in the surface layer, so the first sign of age is cosmetic — the colour fades and the roof looks patchy. What follows is not cosmetic. Rain, frost and acid deposition slowly erode the cement between the sand grains, the face roughens, and eventually the aggregate stands proud and the tile sheds grit into the gutter. That is spalling, and it is the honest end of the tile's life.
Two other failures matter. Delamination, where the tile splits along its horizontal layers, usually starting at the tail — you can hear it as a dull note when you tap the tile. And brittleness: a fifty-year-old tile that was tough when new will crack under a boot, which is why walking an old concrete roof needs crawl boards and why 'while I was up there' repairs sometimes create work rather than finish it.
None of it happens evenly. North-facing slopes hold moisture and moss and go first; south-facing slopes fade first but often stay sound for longer.
Worth re-fixing, or worth replacing?
| What you can see | What it means | Sensible action |
|---|---|---|
| Colour faded, surface still smooth | Pigment loss only. The tile is structurally fine | Leave it. Clean if you want to, nothing more |
| Grit in the gutters, rough faces, aggregate showing | Spalling. The cement matrix is eroding | Tiles will not survive a strip and re-lay — replace the covering |
| Tiles splitting into layers at the tail | Delamination. Usually widespread once it starts | Replace the covering |
| Tiles sound, but felt crumbling in the loft | The underlay has failed, not the tiles | Strip, re-membrane and re-lay the same tiles |
| Ridge or verge mortar cracked and falling | Bedding failure, common at 40+ years | Dry ridge and dry verge conversion |
| Heavy moss in the interlocks | Water is being held on the tile and diverted sideways | Hand-scrape and clear, then reassess the surface |
What we look for on a survey. Photographs of each finding come back with the quote so you can see the evidence rather than take our word for it.
Dry ridge conversion — the cheapest big improvement
BS 5534 was revised in 2014 and mortar-only fixing of ridges and verges effectively stopped being acceptable. That is not retrospective, but the reason behind it is: mortar bedding fails, and a ridge line that lets go in a gale ends up in a garden or on a car.
A dry ridge system replaces the bedding with a ventilated roll and a screw fixing through each ridge tile into a batten. It vents the roof at the same time, which pairs with soffit ventilation to keep a cold loft dry. On a typical 3-bed semi it is £700–£1,500 and takes a day or two. Dry verge units do the same at the gable for £350–£900 a side.
If the tiles are finished
Full strip and re-cover, priced by house type.
If it is just a fault
Individual tiles, ridges, valleys and flashings repaired.
Frequently asked questions
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Call 01256 438323