Roofers in Peterhead

Red granite and what goes on top of it

The local granite gives Peterhead its colour and a good deal of its character. It also gives us a specific job to be careful about. Those walls were built with lime mortar, and a stack rebuilt or repointed in hard cement will trap moisture inside the stone and spall the face off it in the first hard frost. We repoint lime-built stacks in lime. It is slower, it is correct, and on a listed or traditionally built property it is the only thing the council will accept.

Roanheads, Buchanhaven and the exposed edge

The old fishing streets at Roanheads and Buchanhaven sit closest to the water and take spray directly in an easterly. Low cottages, short runs of roof, shallow pitches in places, and roofs that have often been patched several times over. What they usually need is not another patch but the abutments and verges put right, because that is where the wind is getting under.

Further in — Queen Street, Kirkburn, the Clerkhill and Dales estates — the stock changes to inter-war and post-war housing with concrete interlocking tile. Different roof, different faults: cracked tiles, failed mortar verges better replaced with dry verge, and flat-roofed extensions on their second or third covering.

Commercial and harbour-side work

Peterhead has a working port and the industrial units that go with it, so a share of what we are asked about here is not domestic — sheeted roofs on units, large flat roofs, and repairs that have to be worked around a business staying open. Ring and describe the building; we will say honestly whether it is one for us or one for a specialist sheeting contractor.

Getting to you

Peterhead is nineteen miles from us, down through Strichen and Mintlaw, and it is the furthest of our core towns. There is no travel charge on it. For emergency work it means roughly half an hour once we are on the road, which is worth knowing when you are deciding whether to ring tonight or in the morning — ring tonight.