Stroud's roofs sit under trees, on damp valley sides and behind terraces that shade one another. Leaves collect, moss takes hold on north slopes and water finds the smallest gap. A short look at the right parts at the right time catches most of it before a stain appears on a bedroom ceiling.
Everything in the first few sections below can be done from the pavement, a window or the loft hatch. Nothing needs you on the slopes. Where a job does need access, we flag it and leave it to a roofer. If you would rather have a trained eye over the whole roof, Supreme Roofing Stroud can survey it and send you pictures of what was found.
How long a repair or re-roof takes once it is booked is a separate question, covered in our guide to roof job timescales. This page deals with the upkeep that comes first.
Before you start: what safe checking looks like
The golden rule of home roof checks is that your feet stay on the ground. Falls from ladders and roofs are a real hazard, and a mossy slope is slippery in ways that are hard to judge from below. A pair of binoculars does more than a ladder ever will.
Your kit
You need binoculars, a torch, a phone for photographs and a notebook. Work in dry, still conditions and in daylight. Walk a full lap of the house, then look again from the pavement or lane.
What to record
Photograph each elevation, then note anything out of line: a slate that has dropped, a tile with a gap beneath it, a streak of damp on a chimney breast, a gutter with a green stripe where water overflows. A roofer who can see how a fault has changed since March judges its cause far faster than one who sees it only once.
If a check suggests you should be on the roof, stop and ask a roofer instead. A survey costs far less than a fall.
If you are not sure what covers your roof, our guide to Stroud roof types will help you name it. Stone slate, clay, natural slate and concrete tiles all age differently.
Autumn and winter: gutters, downpipes and the loft
Under trees the gutter is usually the first thing to fail. Leaves, seeds and moss debris settle in the run, hold water and push it back over the fascia or down the wall. Autumn, once the leaves are down, is the main clearing time. A second look in late winter catches what the first missed.
Gutters and downpipes
Look along every run for sagging, dripping joints and plants growing in the channel. In heavy rain, watch where the water goes. It should drop into the downpipe, not spill over the front edge. Makers of small domestic systems publish falls from about 1:600 to 1:350, so a gutter holding a long pool has usually sagged between brackets or lost its fall.
If a gutter has dropped at one end, suspect a loose bracket or a soft fascia behind it. MyBuilder's 2026 guide gives guttering at £30 to £70 per metre, and says uPVC fascias are typically replaced every 10 to 20 years and should be inspected every five.
The loft in winter
The loft shows what the outside hides. Take a torch up on a bright day, then switch the lights off. Chinks of daylight mean a missing tile or slate. Check beneath the covering for dark patches or damp felt, and the timbers for wet staining. Make sure the insulation has not been stuffed into the eaves, where it blocks the air path. BS 5250 guidance, as summarised by Marley, calls for ventilation at the eaves of a cold roof, and it cannot work if insulation sits hard against the boards.
Condensation, a musty smell and mould on timbers point to poor ventilation rather than a leak, and the cure is different.
Spring: moss, lichen and slipped coverings
Winter leaves its mark on the slopes, and spring is the time to read it. Moss, lichen and green film show best now. A little lichen is harmless, but a thick cushion of moss keeps the covering wet and prises tiles apart as it grows.
What to look for with binoculars
Scan each slope in strips from eaves to ridge. You are looking for slipped slates, cracked or missing tiles, tiles standing proud of their neighbours and breaks in the line of the courses. On a plain-tile roof, a lifted tile often has a snapped nib. On natural slate, a slate that has slid down usually has a rusted nail above it. On a stone roof, look for slates with the pegs gone and a dark shadow under the tail.
Moss: leave or clear
Cleaning is where roofs are most often damaged. In its 2026 roof cleaning prices, MyBuilder lists manual scraping at £5 to £10 per m², soft wash at £15 to £20 and pressure washing at £10 to £15, and cautions that high pressure can harm delicate tiles. Force can strip the face from concrete tiles and drive water under laps on soft stone. Cotswold District Council's 2000 guidance on stone slate roofs records the older belief that yearly scraping could double a stone roof's life, so moss control is upkeep, not a cosmetic job.
The same guide gives whole-roof cleaning from about £300, with pitched roofs at £450 to £850. Ask any cleaner whether the work is done from a tower or scaffold and not from the slope itself.
Flashings, ridge and chimney: the places leaks begin
A tile or slate field is rarely where a roof first leaks. More often water gets in at a junction, where two surfaces meet and something has to bridge the gap. Mending those joints is roofer's work, but you can spot trouble from the ground.
Flashings and valleys
A flashing is a strip of lead or other metal sealing the joint between the slope and anything that rises through it, such as a chimney, a party wall or a dormer. Soakers are the small lead pieces worked in under each course beside an abutment. Valleys are the inside corners of a roof, taking run-off from two slopes at once. Look for lead that has lifted, split or been smeared with sealant. A bead of mastic along a flashing is a stopgap, not a repair; it cracks, and the water goes behind it. MyJobQuote says lead flashing, properly fitted, may outlast 80 years (over 100 for higher codes).
The ridge
The ridge runs along the top, where the slopes meet. Look for cracked or shifted ridge tiles and for mortar crumbling out of the joints. Under BS 5534:2014 mortar alone no longer holds ridge and hip tiles; clips or screws back it up. A ridge laid in the old mortar-only style is worth having checked. MyBuilder prices ridge re-bedding or replacement at £300 to £600, and dry ridge at £40 to £60 per metre.
The chimney
From a safe place, look at the stack for cracked pointing, a lean, loose pots and a damp stain on the chimney breast inside. Flaunching is the mortar cap that sets the pots and sheds water; when it cracks, rain sits in the stack. Stained brick just below the roofline often means a failing flashing. MyBuilder's 2026 chimney guide gives repointing at about £750 on average, in a range of £500 to £2,000, and flashing repair at £250 to £1,200.
None of these jobs belongs to a homeowner on a ladder. If you see a fault, photograph it and call a roofer.
Summer: flat roofs, lean-tos and valley gutters
Summer light shows what winter hides, and flat roofs hold the clearest evidence. Extensions, garages, porches and bay roofs are flat or close to it on many Stroud homes, and often the easiest roof to study from an upstairs window.
Ponding and blisters
Look for pools still lying the day after rain. Ponding means the roof lacks fall or has sagged. IKO and Rockwool both describe BS 6229 as asking for a design fall of 1:40 so that finished drainage falls of 1:80 are achieved. A roof that holds a pool through a dry spell is not meeting that. Watch for blisters and splits at the laps too.
What the covering is telling you
EPDM is a rubber single-ply membrane; GRP is glass-reinforced plastic, often sold as fibreglass. GreenSpec puts EPDM at 20 to 30 years, and MyBuilder says flat roofs generally last 15 to 30 years. Felt is shorter: Less reckons a well laid roof reaches 20 years, but a poor job may give out within 10. If yours is near the end of its range, ask for an assessment before the first stain appears.
Edges, upstands and outlets
Check that the edge trim is fixed and the membrane laps over it. Where the flat roof meets a house wall, look at the upstand. A gap, a lifted edge or a thin line of sealant can let water in behind the covering, and sun perishes exposed mastic. Outlets and gullies need a glance as well. A handful of leaves can back water up and lift a lap in a downpour. If they are out of reach, add the outlet to the roofer's list.
Month by month: a simple year plan
A calendar makes it easier to remember. Treat it as a guide, not a rule, and look sooner after a hard storm.
| Month | From the ground and loft |
|---|---|
| January | Loft check on a bright day: daylight chinks, damp patches, insulation clear of the eaves |
| March | Binocular lap of every slope after winter: slipped slates, lifted tiles, ridge and pointing |
| May | Moss and lichen check; book scraping if growth is thick; study flat roofs and lean-tos |
| July | Flashings, chimney stack and flat-roof edges in dry light; photograph for comparison |
| September | Order roofer repairs before the weather turns; clear moss debris from gutters |
| November | Clear gutters and downpipes once the leaves are down; watch outlets in heavy rain |
After a storm
Check the path for fallen slates, then look up for shifted ridge tiles, gutters pulled off the fascia and new stains on ceilings. If a leak has started, put a bucket under it, move belongings and call. A leaking roof gets priority from us, and we make it safe before anything else.
Keep a roof diary
One page per year with dates, notes and photographs builds a history. Buyers ask for a roof's history, and a roofer can judge how fast a fault is moving.
What to leave to a roofer, and what a visit looks at
Some work needs a head for heights, proper access and the right materials. The list is short on purpose.
- Anything that means standing on the roof or leaning from a ladder onto a slope.
- Replacing slipped, cracked or missing slates and tiles.
- Re-bedding or refixing ridge and hip tiles.
- Renewing lead flashings, soakers and valleys.
- Chimney repointing, flaunching and stack repairs.
- Flat-roof repairs, new outlets and re-covering.
- Removing moss from fragile coverings such as old stone or thin clay.
What an inspection costs
MyBuilder's 2026 guide gives roof inspections at £150 to £500: a standard visual survey at £150 to £250, a drone survey at £200 to £400 and a thermal survey at £300 to £500. A survey on a hillside terrace may need a tower or scaffold, and roof access on steep Stroud streets explains how that is planned. For an old home, in a conservation area or listed, read listed and conservation-area roofs before any work begins, because the rules on materials differ.
What follows a visit from us
Typical prices are published before anyone visits, and after the survey you get a written quote for the whole job. Repairs match the existing covering, so a stone roof is mended in stone. Our workmanship is guaranteed for 10 years, in writing. Call 01453 933613, send a WhatsApp message or use the enquiry form.