Could felt be put in retrospectively on a roof ?

[Angeldelight81]

Basically my brother’s just been up in the loft and the beams are absolutely soaked. I knew there was a problem but obviously I didn’t know what. And he pointed out that there is no felt. It’s literally slight that you can see tacked onto wooden beams so I’m pretty sure I read or heard that the fault could be put on retrospectively. I’m on making that up in my mind or is anybody else heard of it?

Felt not fault
Slate not slight

The felt goes above the rafters so the slates would need to come off to put the felt on. Having said that the felt is only a secondary defence against water, if the water is on the rafters it must be coming in the slates so you need to find out why that is happening too.

Yes, you can add it retrospectively but it involves taking off the tiles, putting in the felt and replacing the tiles.

Are you sure that's the problem?

So there’s absolutely no felt and the tiles look good though. But yeah obviously there is a problem. I was just hoping from a recycling perspective that we could reuse the tiles but also I don’t want a concrete roof. I’m told they don’t last anywhere near as long as the slate but I’m open to advice on that as well please

When we moved into our house the front half of the roof was like this. They managed to take the tiles off, fit felt to the rafters then reuse the tiles. It will depend on the condition of your tiles though.

By "replacing the tiles" I didn't necessarily mean replace with new ones. You can put many of the original ones back on the roof.

Do you mind if I ask how much that cost please just roughly ?

Is it possibly condensation rather rain as such? We had a huge problem with condensation very recently and some vents sorted it.

When you say are you sure that’s the problem? Did anything else kind of spring to mind that you thought it might be instead of it not having any felt ? Thank you

That’s not out of the question i guess. There’s no obvious leaks at all.

Condensation
Flashing come loose
Extra insulation added preventing ventilation round the edges

If there's no felt, then I'd be surprised if it were condensation. There's normally enough air flow through the gaps to get prevent that.

If joists are soaked, it could be lead flashing around, for example, the chimney stack.

Are all the joists wet or is it localised? Remember that water will run down the joists, so the location of the visible wetness might not correspond to the location of the leak.

It’s literally all of the joists right across the roof of wet, obviously summer wetter than others, but none of them are dry if that makes sense ? I had the flashing around the chimney repaired about 6 months ago hoping that might do the trick but of course it was dry then

How is the loft insulation? Is there a breeze up there?
With regards to felting, when the roofers strip the old slate off, a lot will be broken. Also slate has a finite life and it may not be worth to reuse them. All depends.

I had this done this year. Slate roof. Had tiles taken off and then felted, tiles put back on. Cost £3k (NW) although I had quotes that were double that.

There’s some insolation on the floor of the roof, but there’s nothing in between the joists at all. Like literally you can see the sky. The installation isn’t wet, though it feels damp maybe cold, but it’s not Wet not like the joists.

I had a couple of quotes last year between 12 and six grand to just replace the lot. I suppose I was just hoping that if somebody could go along and staple in some felt it might buy me a bit of time

I'm interested to know where the water is coming from.

Do you find it during the night or early morning when it is cold and frosty? Worse on the north side and not bad on the side getting sun after daybreak?

Or after a mild rainy spell?

So where we started on this journey was that some of the old paint from the walls started peeling off in a bedroom so my brother was convinced that that was damp and then he went up into the loft and just started feeling around up there.

I do have some mould and some damp in the bathroom. But we don’t have an extractor fan in there so logically it would seem that that’s where that has come from.

None of the roofers in the summer mentioned anything about wet joists. And actually I was looking at having the loft boarded and insulated a couple of weeks ago and the guy went up there to measure it and he didn’t say anything about it being wet then and we have just had a downpour yesterday /today.

How old is your house?

And was it built with slate or with tiled roof?

This is important because slates are much lighter, so cheaper (thinner, weaker) roof timbers were used. Unsuitable for loading up with inferior modern concrete tiles

I would get the people who fitted the flashing to come have a look (but if they suggest works get second/third opinions from other roofers)

Have a look at different times of day to find out.

Do you have holes in the ceilings, for example for downlighters?

It’s definitely slate, you can see the difference between mine and the neighbours newer roofs in the street. I would guess it was built at the beginning of the century.

No non-in as yet, but I will be getting them put in when I redo the bathroom

😢

Get fire hoods over them, and a powerful extractor.

Downlights are a notorious source of steamy lofts.