Should You Repair Your Own Roof?

Roof repair looks simple from the pavement: lift a tile, slide a new one in. The trouble is getting to it. A ladder has to stand on firm ground at the right angle and be tied or footed, and stepping from it onto a slope is where many accidents begin. Moss, frost and a film of rain turn slate and tile into a slide.

What goes wrong with a DIY repair?

People work alone, in poor weather, in a hurry because water is coming in. They carry tools and materials with one hand, kneel on tiles that slip or crack, and reach beyond their balance. A tile that is not seated properly will let the next shower in, and the repair has to be done twice.

Professional roofers use edge protection, roof ladders and harnesses where the job calls for them, because height work has rules for good reason. A homeowner with a borrowed ladder has none of that, and nobody below to call for help. If a job needs you on the slope, it is not a DIY job, whatever a video makes it look like.

Some roofs cannot take your weight at all. Garage and outbuilding roofs in corrugated sheet, rooflights in older extensions and conservatory panels can look solid and fail underfoot. HSE guidance A14 describes roofs made of asbestos cement as always fragile, however sound they look from below. For anything built or refurbished before 2000, the HSE's working assumption is that asbestos is there.

What if the roof might contain asbestos?

Do not drill, scrub, break or pressure-wash it, and do not walk on it. Asbestos cement handled carefully and removed whole is non-licensed work, yet once it is substantially broken up the job becomes notifiable. The waste travels on a consignment note, so it cannot go in a household skip. A roofer who deals with these roofs will assess it before touching it.

Our page on garage and asbestos-cement roofs explains how those jobs are approached. If you are unsure what your roof is made from, send a photograph and ask before you climb anything.

Skylights and glazed panels deserve the same caution. Glass and polycarbonate can both give way, and a fall through any roof, fragile or not, can be serious.

You can do a lot without leaving the garden. Stroll round the house and study the roof with binoculars, or zoom in with your phone. Note missing or slipped tiles, a dipping ridge, gutters hanging loose, moss thick enough to hold water, and lead that has lifted at a chimney. Photograph each, with a date.

What can you do inside?

Look into the loft with a torch after rain. Watch for dripping, dark patches on the timbers, wet insulation or a chink of daylight. Set a bucket under a drip and move belongings away. Tell your insurer promptly and keep your photographs, since they support a claim.

Gutters low enough to reach from steady ground may be cleared with a long-handled tool, but any job that rests a ladder on the edge belongs with a professional too. Do not throw water at the roof to find a leak unless someone is watching inside, as it can turn a small fault into a large one.

These checks cost nothing and help a roofer a great deal, because they give a clear picture before anyone arrives on site. A dated set of photographs, taken a little at a time, also shows how quickly a fault is changing.

The point of a survey is finding the cause, not only plugging the gap. A roofer reads the roof, shows you photographs of what they find, and tells you whether a small repair is enough or the covering has had its day. That decision is what most DIY attempts miss.

Is a temporary fix ever fine for the owner?

From inside, yes: a bucket, a sheet over the furniture and a plastic cover over loft insulation are fair stop-gaps. A tarpaulin over a damaged slope is different, because fixing it means getting onto the roof or reaching it from a ladder, and badly secured sheeting can blow off in the first strong wind. Our answer on temporary roof repairs says what a proper stop-gap involves, and the page on roof tiles blown off covers the commonest storm repair. For everything else, start at emergency roof repairs.

When you are ready, send photos of the fault. A survey then gives you a single written total for the repair, and you will have seen the evidence for yourself before agreeing to anything.