The buildings here
Dense Victorian and Edwardian red brick terraces and back to backs off Cardigan Road, Brudenell Road and the streets behind Otley Road, with larger stone villas and Edwardian semis up Headingley Hill and Shire Oak Road. Welsh slate on nearly everything, with box dormers added during loft conversions.
What Headingley roofs are dealing with
The housing here went up fast between about 1870 and 1910 for mill and factory workers, and it went up in two forms. Through terraces with a back addition and a yard, and back to backs where the house is one room deep and shares a rear wall with the house behind. Both got Welsh slate on softwood battens with no underlay, torched underneath with lime mortar.
That construction is now well past the life of its fixings. The iron nails have rusted through, so slates slide out one at a time in every gale. Once we see three or four slipping in different places on the same slope within a season, we will tell you that repairs have stopped being good value and price the re-roof instead.
Back to backs, shared roofs and scaffold
The back to backs off Royal Park Road, Thornville and the Brudenell streets are the awkward ones. A block of eight houses has one continuous roof, divided by party walls that stop short of the covering. Working on your slope means working right up against your neighbour’s, and it means your scaffold has to come off the street because there is no rear access.
That is a highways licence from Leeds City Council every time. We apply for it, pay the fee as a line on your quote, and set the scaffold so the footway stays usable with a proper walkway and lighting where needed.
Loft conversions and dormers
The student market drove a wave of rear loft conversions through Headingley and Hyde Park. Most of those box dormers were felted, and twenty to twenty five years on the felt is blistering and the timber cheeks are soft at the bottom. We recover them in EPDM, renew the upstand detail against the main slope, and sort out the cheeks properly while the access is there.
Timing work around tenancies
Almost everything here lets to students, and the year runs on a fixed rhythm. Tenancies change over in the first week of July, so a landlord has roughly eight weeks with an empty house. Scaffold can stand without a dozen people walking under it, and a full re-roof can run start to finish without a complaint.
We open the summer diary in spring and it fills. If you are a landlord planning a re-roof for the changeover, get the survey done in February or March so the quote is agreed and the slot is held.
What matters locally
Back to backs and no rear access
Whole blocks share one continuous roof slope and there is no rear elevation at all, so every scaffold has to come off the street and needs a Leeds City Council highways licence.
The July and August window
Most of the housing here is let to students on tenancies that change over in early July. Landlords book bigger jobs into the empty weeks, so summer diary slots fill fast and we take bookings from spring.
Box dormers on loft conversions
Hundreds of terraces here gained a rear box dormer in the 1990s and 2000s. The felt flat roofs on those are now at the end of their life, and the cheeks and upstands leak before the middle does.
Parking and narrow streets
Terraced streets off Victoria Road and Ash Road are permit parked and tight. We arrange scaffold deliveries and skip drops in advance so a wagon is not sat blocking the road.
Jobs we do most often in Headingley
- Refixing slipped Welsh slates on nail sick terrace roofs
- EPDM recovers on box dormers over rear loft conversions
- Lead valley renewal between adjoining back additions
- Full re-roofs booked into the tenancy changeover weeks
- Guttering clears and realigns on three storey terraces
- Chimney repointing on party wall stacks