Roof inspections and written reports for mountains homes

Three reasons people book one

You are buying a house up here

Mountains housing stock is old, varied and often hard to see properly from the ground. Weatherboard cottages, Federation and Californian bungalows, inter-war tile, post-war fibro, 1970s brick veneer and modern bush-block builds all sit in the same street. Under canopy, on a steep block, from the footpath, you can learn almost nothing useful about a roof. A roof that needs rebedding, repointing and new valleys across the whole ridge line is a real number to factor into what you offer.

You have a claim or a dispute

Insurers and assessors generally want documented cause, scope and photographs. We provide what we can observe and what we can reasonably conclude from it, in writing, with images.

You suspect the roof is near the end and want a plan

The most common call. The roof has been patched a few times, the pointing is going, the south pitch is green, and you want to know whether you are spending money now or in five years, and roughly how much roof is left.

What we actually look at

• Ridge and hip lines. Bedding and pointing condition, cap movement, cracking, how much of the line has failed as opposed to a bad metre or two.
• Tile or sheet condition. Broken, slipped, crazed, delaminating or chalked tiles; corrosion at laps, fixings and sheet ends on metal roofs.
• Valleys. Litter load, corrosion in the valley iron, any softness in the valley board.
• Flashings and penetrations. Chimneys, skylights, vents, aerials, wall abutments, step and apron flashings.
• Gutters, downpipes and fascia. Falls, standing water, internal corrosion, outlet sizing, rot behind the gutter line, where water discharges.
• The ceiling space, where safe access exists. This is where you find the story: staining and tide marks on rafters, damp or compressed insulation, condensation evidence on the underside of sheeting, daylight where there should not be any, and whether the roof was ever sarked.
• Ventilation and condensation risk. Particularly on metal roofs above 600 metres, where the underside of the sheet sits below dew point on frosty nights.
• Bushfire-relevant detail. Sarking, sealed roof-to-wall junctions, ember guards at openings, metal gutters, litter accumulation at the roof edge.

Access, which matters more here than most places

Plenty of mountains roofs are steep by design, built to throw water and leaf litter off quickly. Add a damp, mossy southern pitch, a block that falls away steeply, mature trees overhanging, and fog that can roll in within the hour, and roof access becomes a genuine safety question rather than a formality.

We will tell you honestly if part of a roof cannot be safely walked on the day, and what we used instead to assess it. What we will not do is write a confident report about a section nobody actually looked at.

What goes in the written report

• What was inspected, how, and anything that could not be accessed and why.
• Photographs of each defect, captioned so you can tell what you are looking at.
• Condition by element: ridges, field tiles or sheeting, valleys, flashings, gutters, ceiling space.
• Likely cause where it can be determined, not just the symptom.
• Recommended works separated into urgent, near-term and monitor.
• An indicative scope, so you can get like-for-like quotes.

Plain English, no padding. The point is that you can hand it to someone else and have them understand it.

What a report will not do

It will not value your property, certify compliance, issue a BAL assessment, or guarantee an insurance outcome. It will not predict the exact year a roof will fail. And it is not a substitute for a full building inspection — it is the roof, done properly.

Free quote inspection, or a standalone report

Two different things, and worth being clear about:

• If you want work priced, the inspection and the written quote are free and carry no obligation. That is the usual path for a repair, a restoration or a replacement.
• If you want an independent written report for a purchase, an insurer or your own records, that is a separate piece of work with its own scope and price, quoted when you book.

Ask for whichever one you actually need and we will tell you which is appropriate.

Booking an inspection

Call (02) 4703 5000 or send the quote form with the suburb, the roof type and what you are trying to decide. We cover the ridge from the lower mountains to Mount Victoria — the full list is on where we work. Work is carried out by established, licensed and insured roofing contractors working to NSW Fair Trading requirements.