Tile Roofing in Sydney: Repair, Restore & Replace

Bedding and pointing: the part that actually fails

The tiles across the field of your roof rarely fail on their own. It is the ridge and hip capping that causes grief, because it sits in a mortar bed and is sealed with a pointing compound along the edges. Over the years Sydney's heat and storms crack that mortar, it lets go, and capping starts to lift or slide.

Modern repointing uses a flexible pointing compound rather than a rigid sand-cement mix, so it moves with the roof instead of cracking straight away. Where the bedding underneath has crumbled we rebed the capping first, then point over the top. Pointing over failed bedding is a short-lived patch we will not sell you.

Cracked, slipped and porous tiles

Individual tiles crack from foot traffic, falling branches and hail. A single cracked tile can leak straight onto your ceiling, so we replace them with matching stock wherever we can source it. Slipped tiles usually mean a broken tile below or a failed clip near the eaves or ridge.

Older concrete tiles can also go porous once their surface coating wears off, soaking up water and growing moss. We can pressure clean and recoat those tiles to restore the surface and shed water again, which is far cheaper than a full re-roof if the tiles are otherwise sound.

Sarking, valleys and when to re-roof

Many older Sydney tiled roofs were laid without sarking, the foil layer under the tiles that catches wind-driven rain and directs it to the gutter. If yours has none and leaks in driving rain, that is often why. A full re-roof lets us add sarking, replace rusted valley irons and renew any tired battens at the same time.