Flat roofing in Norwich

Norwich has a huge stock of Victorian terraced housing, and almost none of it was built with a flat roof, which means every flat roof you find in the city is a later addition, a kitchen extension, a rear dormer, a bathroom pushed out over what used to be yard space. That history matters for how we approach the job, because the flat roof is never the whole story, it is always meeting an older pitched roof or a Victorian brick wall at some point, and that junction is where almost every leak on this kind of roof actually starts.

The junction, not the flat surface, is usually the problem

A flat roof covering itself, whether felt, GRP or EPDM, is a relatively simple thing to keep watertight across its main area. Where it meets an older wall, particularly on a Victorian terrace where the brickwork was never designed with a flat roof abutment in mind, the flashing detail doing that job is doing more work and ageing faster than the flat covering next to it. We check that junction as closely as the roof surface itself on every Norwich flat roof job.

• GRP fibreglass, fully bonded and seamless, from £1,700 on a garage or extension roof
• EPDM rubber membrane, particularly suited to roofs with rooflights or complex upstands common on period rear extensions, from £1,400
• Felt where appropriate, from £950
• Abutment and junction flashing checked as closely as the flat surface itself, since that is where terrace flat roofs most often leak

Rooflights and dormers

A lot of Norwich terrace extensions include a rooflight for natural light in what would otherwise be a dark rear room, and rooflight upstands are a common detail we work around. EPDM's flexibility as a single membrane generally handles this kind of detailing better than GRP, which is part of why we specify it often on this type of job specifically.

Flat roofs near a shared boundary

A rear extension flat roof on a Norwich terrace often sits close to, or right up against, next door's boundary wall, and work in that position can fall under the Party Wall Act depending on exactly what is being done. We flag this during the inspection where it is relevant, since it is far better to know before work starts than to find out partway through that a neighbour needed formal notice first.

This comes up most often on the tightly packed terraces nearer the city centre, less so on more spaced-out modern housing around Costessey or Taverham.

Away from the terraces, in Hellesdon, Costessey, Drayton and Taverham, flat roofs are more likely to be on modern extensions from the outset, a more straightforward job without the same period-property junction complexity, though still checked with the same care.

Cringleford and Old Catton mix both patterns, older property alongside more recent development, and every roof gets the same inspection approach: check the surface, check every junction, photograph both, before any price is given.

Every flat roof carries our 10 year written workmanship guarantee. See the flat roofing page for the full process, or the Norwich page for everything else we cover in the city. Call our Norwich line on 01603 851759.