The buildings here
Stone built Victorian terraces and cottages around Lowtown, Church Lane and Farsley, 1930s brick and pebbledash semis through Stanningley and Swinnow, and post war housing towards Tyersal. Stone slate and Welsh slate on the older stock, concrete tile on the interwar semis.
Two kinds of roof in one town
Pudsey is an old stone township that got surrounded by interwar suburbia, and you can see the join. Around Lowtown, Church Lane and into Farsley the housing is stone with stone slate or Welsh slate roofs, some of it dating to the handloom weaving era. Push out towards Stanningley, Swinnow and the ring road and it becomes 1930s brick and pebbledash semis with concrete tile.
The two need different work. The stone roofs need careful reclaim and relay jobs with attention to pegs, battens and diminishing courses. The semis need ridge and verge work, tile replacement, and most of all flat roofing.
Flat roofs are the Pudsey speciality
Almost every 1930s semi here has had a rear extension at some point, and the cheap way to roof an extension was always felt on a chipboard deck. Those roofs come around every twenty years or so, and a lot of them are due now. Add the box dormers from the loft conversion wave and there is a lot of flat roofing in this postcode.
The pattern we see is consistent. Water stands in a low spot because the fall was never right. Silt and algae mark it out. The felt blisters over the summer, then splits at a seam in the first cold snap. Meanwhile the trims at the edge have lifted and water has been tracking into the deck along the drip for years.
That is why we measure the fall and probe the deck before quoting a covering. Putting new EPDM over a sagging deck buys you a tidier roof with exactly the same problem.
Dormers and the details that fail
Box dormers fail at the junctions. The cheeks, where cladding meets the main roof slope. The top upstand where the flat roof meets the wall or the slope above. The window head and the corners. On the conversions around Stanningley and Swinnow those details were often done in felt dressed against old mortar, which cracks.
We take the cheeks back, put proper lead or membrane upstands in, and carry the flat roof covering up behind the cladding rather than stopping it short.
Getting around Pudsey
The interwar stock has driveways and side access, so scaffold and skips are simple and the access line on your quote stays low. The older streets in Lowtown and Farsley are narrower, often with setted surfaces and parked cars on both sides, and there a highways licence for the scaffold is the normal route. We check all of that at the survey so the price you get reflects your street.
What matters locally
Flat roofed rear extensions
The 1930s semis here nearly all gained a flat roofed kitchen or dining extension, and most of those felt roofs are now on their second or third covering and ponding badly.
Box dormers on loft conversions
Loft conversions are common across Stanningley and Swinnow, and the box dormers that came with them leak at the cheeks and the upstand well before the flat section gives up.
Stone and brick in the same street
Pudsey sits on the Leeds and Bradford boundary and the building stock changes from stone to brick within a few hundred metres, so material matching matters street by street.
Good access on the interwar stock
Driveways and side access on the semis make scaffold and skips straightforward, which keeps access costs below what an inner city terrace needs.
Jobs we do most often in Pudsey
- EPDM recovers on flat roofed rear extensions and garages
- Box dormer repairs including cheeks, upstands and flashings
- Full re-roofs in concrete tile on 1930s semis
- Reclaim and relay on stone terraces around Lowtown and Farsley
- New uPVC guttering, fascias and soffits with eaves ventilation