Dulwich
Flat Roofing in Dulwich
Dulwich is detached and semi-detached houses on plots with room around them, so its flat roofs are separate things rather than squeezed ones: dormers set into big slopes, outbuildings at the end of a drive, single-storey additions at the back. A good deal of the area also needs permission before an external alteration, which is a question to settle before a specification is signed.
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The district
What Dulwich actually covers
Dulwich Village at the centre with the college and the park around it, West Dulwich sloping towards Tulse Hill, Sydenham Hill along the ridge and the tighter Victorian streets of East Dulwich to the north. Large houses, mature trees and long driveways in the middle; smaller and denser at the edges, where the area shades into Peckham and Herne Hill.
Local stock
The roofs of Dulwich
- Flat-roofed dormers on large slopes. Bedrooms in the roof brought a flat top and three vertical cheeks apiece, and the covering has to turn down those cheeks and die into tile or slate. That meeting point is the one that opens, and putting it right is a diagnosed repair rather than a fresh sheet over the top.
- Outbuildings and detached structures. Plots here carry more than the house: a garage roof, a store, sometimes a studio at the bottom of the garden, each with a covering that is nobody’s first thought until something inside it gets wet. They are small enough to renew individually and old enough that most now need it.
- Additions under a consent regime. Where the rear extension is visible from a road or the property sits under estate management, the paperwork arrives before the scaffold. A survey and written specification describing exactly what is proposed is what those approvals are usually asked to consider.
The wider area
The wide shot: Southwark
Dulwich sits at the southern end of a borough that runs all the way to the Thames: the whole Southwark picture. Where the north of the borough is blocks and converted wharves, this end is houses with space around them, and the roof that fails is more often an outbuilding than a main roof.
Questions
Frequently asked questions
Much of Dulwich is held under a scheme of management. Does that affect a roof?
It can, and it is worth checking before work is ordered rather than after. A large part of the area is subject to arrangements under which external alterations need consent, alongside conservation areas covering several streets. We provide the survey and a written specification of what is proposed, which is the document such applications tend to ask for. We neither make the application nor advise on the terms.
What usually goes first on a flat-roofed dormer?
The junction between the dormer and the main slope, almost every time. The small flat top is the easy part; the difficulty is where its covering turns down the cheeks and meets tiles or slates, and where a hundred years of movement has opened that line. A dormer can be renewed on its own without touching the pitched roof around it, provided that junction is remade properly.
Is the flat roof on a detached garage worth renewing on its own?
Usually yes, because it is a small independent structure and nothing else on the house depends on it. What decides the route is the boarding underneath: sound boarding takes a new covering over the top, while soft boarding means the whole thing comes off and gets rebuilt. That is a decision made by opening up a corner, not by looking at it from the garden.
A flat roof problem in Dulwich?
Dormer, outbuilding or rear addition: tell us which one and what it has done.
We need a little more before we can send that: a name, the postcode of the roof, what is happening with it, and either a phone number or an email address.
Sorry, that did not send. What you wrote is still here, so press send again when you have a signal. If it will not go, ring 07593 196505 or email office@pluvian.uk.
That has come through a few times already. If the first one did not arrive, ring us instead or email office@pluvian.uk and we will pick it up from there.
Coming out and pricing the work is free; a written condition survey carries a fee, agreed before the visit and taken off the price of the work if you go ahead.