Not every storm that damages a roof is a wind storm. Maesteg sits high in the Llynfi Valley, and upland South Wales has a well-known relationship with rain: moist air arriving off the Bristol Channel is forced upward by the rising ground, cools as it rises, and drops its water inland and upland rather than on the coast.
The result is that a valley town can receive a great deal more rain from the same weather system than a coastal one, and for longer. T & T Roofing South Wales repairs storm damage throughout Maesteg and the Llynfi Valley, and a fair share of it involves water rather than wind.
Below is what we are most often called to in Maesteg, roughly in the order it comes up. If what has happened to your roof is not on the list, call anyway — it is not an exhaustive list, it is the common ground.
Wind damage is immediate and usually visible: something has moved or gone. Rain damage is cumulative and often invisible until it arrives inside. A roof can shed ordinary rain perfectly for years and fail in one prolonged downpour, not because anything broke but because the volume exceeded what the roof could get rid of.
That is a capacity problem, and it shows up in specific places: the valley gutters between roof planes, the guttering and downpipes, the laps between courses of tile or slate, and any junction where the roof relies on water moving away quickly.
A useful thing to notice. If your roof leaks in prolonged heavy rain but stays dry in ordinary rain, that points strongly towards capacity or drainage rather than a hole. It is a different diagnosis and a different repair, and it is worth telling us, because it saves time on the roof.
Guttering is the part of a roof most likely to be defeated by volume, and storms make it worse by delivering the debris that blocks it at the same moment as the water. Moss dislodged from the covering, leaves and twigs all end up in the same channel.
When a gutter overflows, water runs down the wall behind it and into the eaves, saturating the top of the wall, the fascia and the ends of the roof timbers. That damage develops slowly and shows up as damp at the tops of upstairs walls rather than as a dripping ceiling, so it is often attributed to something else entirely.
The older Maesteg housing is terraced and slated, built for the collieries and ironworks of the Llynfi Valley, and much of it retains its original Welsh slate. Slate copes with rain outstandingly well. Its nails do not.
Repeated wetting accelerates the corrosion of fixings, and once nails fail the slate slides. On a steep valley-side terrace, a slipped slate rarely stops where it started, which is why gaps in Maesteg roofs are sometimes larger than the single failure that began them.
Where two roof slopes meet at an internal angle, the valley between them carries a disproportionate share of the roof's water through a narrow channel. In prolonged rain that channel is working at its limit; add a blockage and water rises above the level of the covering either side and runs beneath it.
Terraced properties with rear extensions and outhouses — the usual arrangement in the valleys — often have more than one valley, and the one at the back is the one nobody sees.
The ridge is the roof's most exposed line and also the point where wind-driven rain can be pushed upward against the direction the roof is designed to shed. Mortar-bedded ridges from the original construction have usually lost their bond to thermal movement long before anything visible happens.
We assess mortar ridges, damaged dry-ridge components and ridge sections that remain in position but are no longer securely fixed. In a wet climate the last category matters, because a loose ridge tile lets water in every time it rains, not only in a storm.
A chimney stack is masonry standing in the weather on all four sides, and sustained rain saturates it. Wet masonry weathers faster, mortar joints open, flaunching at the top cracks, and water can track down inside the stack and appear at ceiling level as a stain that looks like a roof leak but is not.
Unused stacks are worse, because a working flue dries a chimney from the inside and an abandoned one has nothing doing that job. We assess the stack, the flaunching, the pots and the flashing at the base as one piece of work.
A flat roof is never truly flat; it is laid to a shallow fall so water moves to an outlet. Prolonged rain tests both the fall and the outlet, and storm debris blocks outlets at exactly the wrong moment.
Standing water is the thing to watch for. It puts weight on the structure, finds any weakness in a joint or a seam, and on an older covering it accelerates deterioration. We assess felt, EPDM and other systems, along with the drainage arrangements that are usually the real problem.
Where water is entering a property, the first priority is to reduce further damage; where materials are loose, it is to remove the risk of a fall. What is possible on the day depends on weather and safe access, and on a wet slate roof on a valley side that judgement matters more than usual.
We inspect the damage and provide a written quotation for the roofing work required. It is worth knowing that insurers often treat storm damage and gradual water ingress differently, and that the distinction turns on the facts rather than on how the claim is worded.
We describe what we find accurately, including where prolonged rain has revealed a defect that was already developing. That is more useful to you than an account that does not hold up when it is examined.
Usually a capacity or drainage problem rather than a hole — a blocked valley, an overwhelmed gutter, or a junction that cannot cope with volume. Tell us that when you call, because it changes where we look first.
That pattern often points to an overflowing gutter rather than the roof covering. Water running behind a blocked gutter saturates the top of the wall and the eaves.
Air forced upward by rising ground cools and drops its moisture, so upland and valley locations generally receive more rainfall from the same weather system than the coast does.
Only if you can do it safely from the ground or a properly footed ladder on level ground, and not while it is still windy or wet. On a valley-side terrace it is often not a sensible job to attempt yourself.
It is worth attending to. A slipped slate leaves the roof open at that point every time it rains, and it can fall later without warning.
It can be. Water can track down inside a saturated stack and appear at ceiling level looking exactly like a roof leak, which is why we assess the stack as well as the covering.
Yes, Maesteg and the surrounding Llynfi Valley communities. Call and tell us where you are and we will confirm.
Five guides written specifically for Maesteg. We are publishing these in batches rather than all at once, so some are still being written — those are marked, rather than linked to a page that is not there.
We cover fifteen areas from our base in Neath. If yours is not listed, call and ask — the list is where we work most, not a boundary.
Tell us what the weather has done and what you can see from the ground. We will assess the roof, explain what needs repairing and give you a free, no-obligation quotation.
Tell us what the weather has done and what you can see from the ground. We will come back to you — usually the same day.
If water is coming in now, please call rather than email — 07766 547309.
