Where the movement comes from
A tiled roof is a set of overlapping units hung on timber battens, the thin laths running across the rafters. Each tile is held by its own nails, a clip, or both. When you hear a rattle, one or more of those units has slack. The causes a roofer looks for are these:
- Nails that have rusted through or worked out of the batten, so the tile rests on its neighbours without being held down.
- Clips that were never fitted or have corroded away. A clip is a small metal retainer that hooks over the tile's lower edge and stops it lifting.
- Battens that have shrunk, split or rotted around the nail holes, so the nail has nothing firm to bite.
- Tiles that have worn or chipped at the nail hole, leaving the nail head with nothing to press on.
A fifth source is the ridge, the highest line of the roof, and the hips, its angled outer corners. Ridge and hip tiles bedded in ageing mortar can crack free and knock against each other in a blow. From the bedroom the noise sounds much the same, but the repair is different.
What the wind does to a tile
Wind pulls at a roof as well as pushing on it, because air racing over a slope lowers the pressure above the tiles and tries to lift their edges. A tile that is held down firmly cannot move far. A tile that has slack lifts, drops back and taps, which is the rattle you hear.
The Met Office's own long-term records at Manston give a mean wind speed of 9.86 knots over 1991 to 2020, and 11.21 knots in January. Those are averages, and a gust in a winter gale is far stronger, so a roof meets loads well beyond the figure.
BS 5534 governs slating and tiling work, and Marley describes it as carrying the uplift calculations that decide how a covering is fixed. The slate maker Cupa notes that hillside, coastal and tall buildings are graded as more exposed. BS 5534 has the fixings calculated against the exposure of the site, not guessed from the tile alone, and once that margin is gone the roof starts to chatter.
What gets checked and refixed
The survey starts from the ground and the loft, then moves onto the roof with a roof ladder where a closer look is needed. The order of work is usually:
- Find which tiles move and note the slope, since a rattle often traces to a small patch.
- Lift the tile and inspect the nail, the clip and the batten under it.
- Refix with new corrosion-resistant nails and a clip where the tile has none, or replace the tile if the nail hole has worn through.
- Cut out and replace any batten that is split or soft.
- Look along the ridge and hips. Marley's account of the 2015 BS 5534 amendments is that mortar on its own stopped counting as a sound way to secure a covering, and BS 8612:2018 sets out how ridges, hips and verges are fixed without mortar.
The building regulation behind all of this is short. Approved Document C asks for every tile on a roof to be fixed appropriately. The pages on whether tiles need clips and on BS 5534 tile fixing go further into the detail.
What to do until someone has looked
Do not climb up to find the tile yourself. A slope that is wet or mossy gives way underfoot, and the page on walking on a tiled roof explains why that is a trade skill. From the garden, a phone photo with the zoom on, or a pair of binoculars, will show a tile sitting proud of its neighbours or a gap along the ridge. Note which slope the noise comes from and whether it is loudest in a particular wind direction.
Send those photos with a description of when you hear it. A rattle that has started recently, after a gale, matters more than one that has always been there, and a roofer can tell from the pictures how urgent the visit is.
A visit comes before any price, and what you receive is one written total. If a tile has already slipped or dropped into the garden, keep it, and let your insurer know first. The pitched roofing service page sets out how a tiled roof is repaired from first look to finished job: pitched roofing.
