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Roofshelter · Sydney
We work east from our Rosehill base, through Auburn and out into the Inner West. The housing stock changes as you go, so the roofs fail in different ways, and the repair that fixes one is often the wrong answer on the other.
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Based in Rosehill
Open 24 hours
Where we work
Both areas are close enough to get to the same day. The difference is what we expect to find once we are up there, and that changes what the inspection is looking for.
Ten minutes east of our Rosehill base, which is close enough to get to a leaking roof the same day and still finish the job we are already on.
Cracked ridge capping on mid-century tile. The most common job in Auburn and Lidcombe by a distance, and the cheapest to fix. Re-pointing starts at $800.
Covers: Auburn, Lidcombe, Berala, Regents Park, Silverwater, Newington, Homebush West, Sydney Olympic Park, Granville, Clyde
Older housing stock, older roofing materials, and failure modes you simply do not meet out west. Slate, Marseille terracotta, box gutters and parapets.
Slipped slates and nail sickness. Slates sliding out with no damage to the slate. The fixings have corroded, and that is a different repair to simply putting the slate back.
Covers: Concord, Concord West, Strathfield, Burwood, Croydon, Ashfield, Summer Hill, Haberfield, Five Dock, Drummoyne, Canada Bay, Rhodes, Mortlake, Cabarita, Leichhardt, Balmain, Rozelle
If your suburb is not in either list, call anyway. Those two pages cover where the roofs differ enough to be worth writing about. The full run of suburbs we work in is below.
The drive east
Rosehill to Balmain is a short run east and roughly a century of housing. Here is what is over your head at each stage of it.
Brick veneer and full brick, with concrete tile laid from the fifties through the seventies. This is the stock we are on most weeks, and it fails in a predictable order. The tiles are usually still structurally sound long after the bedding mortar under the ridge caps has gone rigid and cracked.
Post-war and mid-century brick, and the same era of concrete tile. Cracked ridge capping is the most common job here by a distance, and the cheapest to fix. The other half of the work is valley irons that have rusted through where leaf litter held water against bare steel for thirty years. There is also a lot of subdivision going on, which means new roofs sitting beside fifty-year-old ones and shared boundaries where one roof drains onto another. Worth knowing before anyone chases a leak on the wrong side of a fence.
A completely different proposition. Much of Newington went up for the 2000 Olympics and the blocks around it have followed since, so this is newer tile and Colorbond on tighter modern rooflines, often with box gutters and parapets on duplexes and townhouses. These roofs rarely need restoring yet. What they need is the flashings and box gutters checked, because a modern roof that fails does it through a detail rather than through the tiles. The blocks are open and exposed too, so they catch wind that older tree-covered streets do not.
Go east of Strathfield and the housing stock changes decades. Federation and Victorian terraces, California bungalows, interwar brick. The roofs on them are slate, Marseille pattern terracotta and early concrete tile, and a good number are still on their original material. Box gutters and parapets barely exist on a Parramatta brick veneer and are everywhere on a terrace. Conservation areas through Haberfield, Balmain and parts of Ashfield add real constraints on what a roof may be replaced with, which is another reason repair first is usually the right answer this far east.
Concrete tile of that era routinely outlasts the house. When one of those roofs leaks, what has usually failed is the mortar and the valleys, and both are fixable without touching the rest of the roof. A box gutter or a parapet flashing at the other end of the run is the same story: it presents as a ceiling leak, it feels catastrophic, and it is still a repair.
That matters because the gap between the two answers is large. Re-pointing ridge capping starts at $800. A re-roof is a different order of money, and the only thing standing between being quoted one and needing the other is somebody getting on the roof and photographing what is actually there.
So that is what the free inspection is. Ladder up, walk it, photograph every valley, ridge, flashing and gutter, and put what we found in writing before anyone talks about price. You keep the photos either way.
By material
The material on your roof tells you more than the postcode does. These are the six we meet across both areas, and what each one is really asking for.
Almost certainly. Those two pages exist because the roofs there differ enough to be worth writing about separately, not because they are the boundary of where we work. The full run of suburbs is listed further down this page. If you are outside it, ring anyway and we will tell you honestly whether we are the right people to call.
Strathfield is roughly where the stock changes. West of it, expect concrete tile and the ridge capping and valley iron story. East of it, expect slate, terracotta, box gutters and parapets. The material on your roof matters more than the postcode, and if you are not sure what you have, that is the first thing the inspection tells you.
Auburn is about ten minutes from our Prospect Street base in Rosehill, and Concord, Strathfield and Burwood are a straightforward run east along Parramatta Road. Further into Leichhardt and Balmain we still come, but for an emergency at 2am the honest answer is that someone closer will be faster. We will tell you that on the phone rather than after you have waited. The phone is answered around the clock.
Usually not, and it is the most useful thing on this page. Concrete tile of that era routinely outlasts the house, and what has failed is the mortar and the valleys. A box gutter or a parapet flashing is a repair, not a re-roof. The free inspection tells you which you are dealing with, in writing, with the photographs.
Where we work
That is what the free inspection is for. We get on the roof, photograph what is actually failing, and put the answer in writing before anyone talks about price.
The phone is answered 24 hours, including weekends.
