Lead work is essential for waterproofing the joins and transitions on your roof - around chimneys, dormers, skylights and valleys. Poorly fitted or cracked lead is one of the most common causes of internal water damage. We carry out lead flashing repairs and full replacements across North Walsham and the surrounding villages.
Photo from one of our recent jobs
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Lead has been used on British roofs for centuries because nothing else matches it for longevity and flexibility at the points where a roof meets a wall, chimney or other structure. If water is finding its way in around a chimney stack, dormer window or roof valley, failed lead work is almost always the cause. We carry out lead flashing repairs and full lead replacements on properties across North Walsham and the surrounding villages.
Lead is used wherever two surfaces meet and need a permanent, watertight seal. The most common locations are:
Every one of these locations is a potential weak point. When lead cracks, lifts or pulls away from its mortar joint, water tracks straight through and often travels a good distance before it shows up as a stain on a ceiling or wall. Finding the true source of the leak usually means a thorough inspection from the roof itself, not just from ground level.
Good lead work is not simply cutting a strip of sheet lead and pressing it into place. The lead must be cut to the correct code (thickness) for the application - Code 3 is generally limited to soakers and lightly protected details. Using lead that is too thin will crack and fail prematurely.
Each length of flashing is dressed carefully to the shape of the surface beneath it. On a brick chimney the top edge is cut and tucked into a raked mortar joint, then repointed to hold it firmly - this is called a chase fixing. On a tiled roof, soakers are woven in between the individual tiles course by course so that the flashing covers the joint without lifting the tiles unnecessarily.
Lead also needs to be fixed in manageable lengths - no single piece should exceed around 1.5 metres - because lead expands and contracts with temperature change. Fixing it in too long a run causes rippling, splitting and eventual failure. Lap joints between lengths must be correctly formed so water cannot track back underneath.
When we remove old lead, we check the substrate beneath. On older properties around North Walsham and the nearby villages, the timber brickwork or render that the lead sits against can have taken water damage itself and may need attention before new lead goes on. Skipping that step means the new work will fail sooner than it should.
Not all lead work needs to come off completely. If the lead itself is in sound condition but the mortar pointing that holds the top edge has cracked out, repointing and re-dressing the existing flashing is often perfectly adequate and much cheaper than a full replacement. We will always tell you honestly which approach is appropriate after inspecting the roof.
Where the lead has cracked through, developed splits along a fold, or has been repaired multiple times with sealant, replacement is the right call. Sealant repairs to lead are a short-term fix at best - the sealant cannot cope with the same thermal movement that lead handles naturally, and it typically starts to fail within a season or two.
Complex chimney jobs take longer and require careful work to avoid disturbing the stack itself, but they are well worth doing properly rather than patching repeatedly.
Lead work is classified as a height-safety risk the moment it involves roof access, and a chimney stack repair can mean working at the highest point of the building. Beyond safety, the quality of the finished job depends heavily on experience. Poorly formed laps, lead fixed in over-long runs, or a chase that has not been raked out and repointed properly will fail within a few years regardless of the quality of the material used.
A common problem on properties where lead work has been done cheaply is finding that the previous installer used a sealant-only fix - no proper chase, no soakers, just a bead of silicone or bitumen mastic pressed around the edge of the flashing. When that sealant breaks down, water gets in just as freely as before. Doing the job to the correct standard the first time is always cheaper than repeating it.
We will arrange to inspect the roof and identify exactly where the lead work is failing and why. Once we have seen the job we can give you a clear, specific price for the work required. Valley replacements and complex chimney lead work on larger properties take longer, and we will give you a realistic timeframe when we quote.
After the work is done, we clean up fully and take away any old lead. Lead is a valuable scrap material and is always recycled rather than going to landfill. If we find anything else on the roof that needs attention while we are up there - a slipped tile, a cracked ridge, a blocked valley - we will point it out so you can decide whether to deal with it at the same time.
Lead flashing repair and replacement in North Walsham typically costs between £200 and £600 for a standard chimney flashing job, depending on the size of the stack, the number of faces involved and whether repointing is needed. Valley replacements on a full roof slope cost more and are priced individually once the length and code of lead required is confirmed. A plain repoint and re-dress of existing sound lead is usually at the lower end of the range.
If you have a damp patch on a ceiling near a chimney breast or dormer, or have noticed mortar dropping from around a flashing, call us to arrange a roof inspection so we can find the source and give you an accurate price for putting it right.
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Call any time. Calls are answered day and night and passed straight to our roofers.
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