Ah, but old buildings were the best...
We hear it all the time and so often that we get fooled into believing it's true.
Don't get me wrong, some were great, but some are truly terrible. And we only NORMALLY kept the good ones.
This one is not one of those.
This is a roof of a building my friend and I do a lot (and I mean A LOT) of maintenance on. It has a roof that has a whole section completely enclosed. It's the area of about a tennis court in total, and all that water goes down four downpipes about 3 inches in diameter through INTERNAL gutters and downpipes.
The bottom of the valley is only just big enough to put my foot in. The skylights hide a very real danger as well - the drop the other side is a fall down a 5 storey stairwell!
All we can really do with this roof is patch it up steadily and stop leaks as they occur. The lead doesn't go far enough up the roof to prevent the water leaking in when it backs up as well - another perpetual problem!
We do think we've come up with a solution though, building a new gutter/flat roof about 6ft up from the bottom of this one. It would mean loosing some skylights (what you see here is just one side of it), but it would mean we could create some safe access to the roof (we have an awkward climb through a skylight currently) and as well as that it would mean we could fix all the other issues of how the water exits the roof.
But the whole thing just makes me wonder what they were thinking when they designed this roof. Even when labour was cheap it would have still been near impossible to maintain it properly. Yes it looks nice, but other than that it's a very daft design!
How would you deal with this poor design if it was on your roof?
I have never seen such a thing. I can't imagine how much water has leaked into that house over the years. For me, the only solutions are: build a new roof starting at the peak of the existing roof which would mean the chimney would need to be extended and all the skylights in your picture would disappear, OR tear the entire thing off and rebuild the entire roof properly. Neither sound like a project I would like to be involved in!
ReplyDeleteWe've talked about putting a new roof on top - it's just not really very feasible. this is looked down on by a few more properties (it's very hilly here) and because it houses 16 flats taking the roof off completely would be very costly, especially with the height of it.
DeleteA leaky roof is one of the most annoying problems in a house. I could imagine how perpetually annoyed the occupiers are.
ReplyDeleteYeah, it's not idea l for the tenants
DeleteAdd another story to the building and cover it with a proper roof.
ReplyDeleteIt's not listed but it's a very prominent building, we'd never get planning permission, plus it's 5 stories already I doubt the footings would take another.
DeleteNew roof with plastic membrane under slates and vents. Is that allowed on old property?
ReplyDeleteIt is, but it would be such a big job and not fix the problem of the water being collected in the middle like this.
DeleteWhat Ed said.
ReplyDeleteBe great if we could. I think my half way gutter/valley might be what we do as we won't need permission to do that and it won't alter the look from the outside.
DeleteI had a house with an internal gutter what a complete P I T A. Your idea sounds feasible but could you go from ridge to ridge? - flat roof that empites onto the outside faces of the roof where bigger gutters and down pipes could be installed. (Expense i know but in effect creates a whole new attic space)
ReplyDeleteRidge to ridge would be ideal, but as there are houses higher up the hill that look down on it I don't think we'd get away with it.
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