Four seasons of checks for ridges, verges, gutters, flashings and flat-roof outlets, set against the Manston weather averages, plus a short list of jobs that should never be tackled from a homeowner's ladder.
A roof seldom gives up in one dramatic night. It wears out over a few winters, as a ridge tile loosens, a gutter joint weeps onto the brickwork or a flat-roof outlet silts up, until one wet week shows the damage on a bedroom ceiling. A short habit of looking, repeated each season, catches those small faults while they are still cheap to put right.
Met Office averages for Manston, from 1991 to 2020, give a feel for what a Thanet roof has to cope with: about 613 mm of rain a year, falling over roughly 110 days of 1 mm or above, and a mean wind close to 10 knots. They describe one station and say nothing certain about your street, yet they show why a house near open water needs its fixings and drainage watched.
Everything below can be done from the garden, the pavement or a window. Nothing needs you on the roof, and some jobs should not be done by an owner at all. If a check turns up something you do not like, our roof inspections page explains what a surveyor looks at, and the homepage at Castle Roofing Margate has the quickest way to send us photos.
Why a seasonal habit suits a coastal roof
A roof is a set of joints more than a surface. Slates and tiles overlap, lead turns up walls, ridge tiles sit along the top and gutters carry everything away. Wind works at those joints a little at a time, and rain finds whichever one has opened. That is why a quarterly look is more use than one big inspection every few years.
Manston's averages put some numbers on the exposure. The Met Office records a mean wind speed of 9.86 knots over 1991 to 2020, with January the roughest month at 11.21 knots, and about 21 days of air frost a year. Frost matters because ice forming in a hairline crack prises it wider. Wind matters because it works at every fixing, gust after gust, all winter.
When a covering is laid or repaired, the roofer works out its fixings for the exposure of that particular site, following BS 5534, the code that governs slating and tiling. That is design work, and it is the roofer's. Your part is simply to notice change.
- Take the same photo of each slope from the same spot each season. A slate that has slipped three centimetres is easy to spot against last time's picture.
- Keep the pictures in one folder on your phone, dated by the phone itself.
- Write down anything you see inside as well: a new stain, a smell of damp in the loft, a patch of peeling paint near an outside wall.
That small record also helps if you later talk to an insurer, because it shows what condition the roof was in before any damage.
Autumn: gutters, outlets and the first storms
Autumn is the time to clear what the summer left behind, before the wettest months. Leaves, moss and the seeds from nearby trees collect in gutters and in the outlets of flat roofs, and a blocked outlet turns a flat roof into a shallow pond. The weight of standing water is not good for a deck, and water that finds no way out will look for a way in.
Standing at ground level with binoculars, look for the following:
- Plants growing out of a gutter, which means it has held soil and water for a while.
- Staining or green streaks on the wall below a gutter joint, the sign of a slow leak.
- A gutter that sags between brackets, so water sits instead of running to the downpipe.
- A curtain of water pouring past the gutter in a downpour, which usually means a blockage or a lost fall.
Gutters are laid to a gentle slope towards the outlet; Brett Martin's installation advice gives 1 mm for every 600 mm of run. Where that slope has been lost, clearing the leaves will not cure the overflow.
A ladder at gutter height is where roofline jobs turn dangerous for a homeowner, so use a hand-held tool from the ground where you can, or book it. For a sense of cost, Which? Trusted Traders (November 2025) quotes a typical UK range of £75 to £350 for a full gutter clear, front and rear, excluding VAT. Kent lies in the South East, and the guide expects prices near the top of a range there. Our piece on what a roofer costs in Margate gives more figures. Our guide to how often to clean gutters goes further.
Flat roofs deserve a look too. Our page on a blocked flat roof outlet shows what silting looks like and what clears it.
Winter: look, do not climb
Winter is the season for watching rather than working. Frost and wind make a pitched roof dangerous to stand on, and the repairs that suit a roof best need dry weather. What you can do is check the house after each spell of rough weather.
After a gale, walk round the outside and look on the ground for slate fragments, pieces of tile, a length of ridge or a bent piece of metal. Fragments in the border mean something above has gone. Leave anything big where it fell until you have photographed it, then keep it clear of children and pets.
Inside, the loft tells you what the outside cannot. On a dry day, take a torch up and study the timbers near the chimney and the eaves. Dark water tracks on timber, damp insulation or a patch of daylight where there should be none are all worth a photograph.
- Check the ceilings below the loft for new stains, especially after a night of wind-driven rain.
- Look along the ridge from the ground for a line that no longer looks straight.
- Check the verges, the edges of the roof at the gable ends, for tiles that have shifted or a gap between the covering and the wall.
- Look at the chimney for a leaning pot or crumbling mortar at the top.
If water is coming in, your first step is to make the house safe and tell your insurer. Our page on emergency roof repairs covers what a make-safe involves, and the piece on storm damage and roof insurance claims explains the paperwork.
Spring: the proper survey of what winter did
Spring is the best time for a careful look, because winter has had its say and the ground is dry enough to stand back from the house. Go round slope by slope, front first, and compare each one with your autumn photographs.
The places that tend to show winter's damage are the same on most pitched roofs, and each one has a plain name worth knowing:
- Ridge: the line along the top, capped with ridge tiles. Since the 2015 amendments to BS 5534, mortar by itself is no longer trusted to hold ridge and hip tiles, so look for tiles that have moved or mortar that has crumbled and let daylight through.
- Verge: the sloping edge of a gable end, finished either with mortar or a dry-fix system to BS 8612:2018. Gaps and loose tiles here let wind get under the covering.
- Flashings: strips of lead sealing the slope against a chimney, a wall or a dormer. Look for lifted edges, splits or a line of daylight.
- Valleys: the troughs formed where two slopes join. Leaves and moss collect here, and lead or a GRP lining can crack with age.
Lead sheet comes in numbered codes by thickness. Each detail's code is written into the specification, so a roofer who tells you a flashing is the wrong thickness should be able to say which code was specified and why.
Spring is also when birds start looking at gutters, soffits and gaps under tiles. Section 1 of the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 makes it an offence for a person to act intentionally against an active wild bird's nest, whether it is being built or already occupied. Look before any work starts, and let the birds finish.
Summer: the dry months for jobs that need dry weather
Summer gives the dry spells that flat-roof work, lead repairs and re-bedding need. If your spring survey found something, this is when to book it, because a repair planned in July is usually calmer than one forced by a wet week in November.
Flat roofs are worth a long look in the heat. Felt can blister and split, a rubber membrane can lift at an edge, and a glass-reinforced plastic roof, known as GRP, can show hairline cracks at a joint. Sun and standing water over the winter leave marks you can read from a window above: a ring where a puddle sat, a bubble, or a seam that has opened.
Flat roofs are drained by falls. For membrane roofs, BS 6229:2025 is read by the trade as a minimum finished fall of 1:80, while IKO recommends designing single-ply roofs for 1:40. A hollow where water lingers points to a roof that is not shedding water as designed.
| Check | From the ground? | Leave to a roofer |
|---|---|---|
| Ponding on a flat roof | Yes, from an upstairs window | Re-laying to a fall |
| Moss on a pitched slope | Yes | Safe removal |
| Lifted lead at a chimney | Yes, with binoculars | Any repair |
| Sagging gutter | Yes | Re-fixing to the fall |
Our guide to signs a flat roof is failing lists what to look for, and photographs taken now give a baseline for next summer.
Jobs that belong to a roofer with the right access
Some tasks look like maintenance and are really work at height. Regulation 6(3) of the Work at Height Regulations 2005 requires employers to prevent falls likely to injure someone, within what is reasonably practicable. A roofer meets that duty with scaffold, edge protection or other access. A homeowner on a ladder has none of those.
Leave these to someone equipped for them:
- Anything that means standing on a pitched roof, including clearing a valley or re-seating a ridge tile.
- Moss removal with a pressure washer, which Marley advises against because it can damage the surface of a tile.
- Walking on a flat roof with a fragile finish.
- Any work near a chimney where the stack leans or the mortar crumbles.
- Removing a bird's nest that is in use, because of the Wildlife and Countryside Act wording above.
Roof coverings on older garages or sheds may be asbestos cement, which is always fragile and must never be walked on. HSE says that if the building was built or refurbished before 2000, assume asbestos is there. If you are unsure, leave it alone.
The scaffolder applies to Kent County Council for the licence whenever the poles sit on the footway. It wants 5 working days' notice before the start date.
Spring and autumn are good moments to ask for a survey, and a fair time to go through your own photographs together with whoever does it, slope by slope. The survey is followed by a written total for everything it turns up, in one figure, and the decision stays with you.
