Queries re. repairing roof on summer house

[matei]

Hi all,

After some advice on how to proceed with the repair the roof on a summer house in our back garden, said house came with the property we bought and it is in fairly good shape - save for the roof... however I've little experience repairing things in general, especially roofs!

Would this be a good candidate for EPDM roofing? Here are some pics:

Also - there isn't anything under the felt save for the wooden slats. Should there not be some sort of layer between the slats and the felt?

The neighbour said that the previous owner put it in around 25 years ago, and the felt is quite clearly past it's best-by date. The rest of the house is in good shape, and it is surprisingly mould/bug free. Don't know what kind of wood it is... smells vaguely like cedar.

Anyway... it is rather awkward to get up there with a ladder, I mean I can get up to roof level, but I'm a bit wary of treading on the roof as it only appears to be made out of slats. How would a person usually go about this?

Lastly... we've a fair amount of work that is more urgent to do to the real house, was thinking of putting some Roofix on there for the time being to hold this at bay until I can tackle the task properly over the summer. Might this be a decent stop-gap measure?

As it turns out, our flat-roofed garage has a similar issue (cracking felt) and it is lower on the urgency list compared to other needs (new bathroom etc). I had patched up the cracked edges of the garage roof felt with flashband, it is OK save for one area where water tends to pool a bit, can see the plywood underneath with some wet spots.

Was thinking about patching both the summer house and garage roofs with some Roofix until summer, when the budget situation offers some more flexibility.

Thanks!

 

[ree]

The roof covering and the roof "design" have been failing since day one.

All the felt and roof battens, barge boards & eaves battens must be stripped and re-done.
It might be that the boarded roof needs attention or renewal due to water damage?

 

[oldbutnotdead]

I'd have said EPDM was overkill for a garden shed- I think you need a solid roof surface for that stuff which would add a fair bit of load to the skinny 2 x 2s holding the thing up.

Yes the felt and batten design of the roof is fairly shoddy but if it has lasted 25 years then it hasn't done badly. Part of the problem may be the battens running up the roof- is the felt overlapped under those battens? (Can't quite tell from your pics). If it is then that'll be where the water is getting in- don't think you can seal shed felt joints like that.

If it was my shed I'd strip the felt (and the bits holding it down) off, let the roof timbers dry out in the baking sunshine of an English winter, throw some more preservative at the roof planks (having first prodded them with a screwdriver to make sure they haven't rotted, they look OK from the inside) then recover with felt. but this time run all the felt across the roof (not just the ridge piece)- you'll either end up with generous overlaps (no bad thing) or you might get lucky and be able to split one length of felt down the middle to do both the short side pieces.

For working on that roof (where you need to, which shouldn't be much) I'd brace internally with a couple of bits of 4 x 2 then use half a sheet of gash plywood or OSB or whatever as a spreader on the roof itself. If I've got the scale right, ridge to eaves is about 2 metres so you'd only really need the spreader to spike the ridge felt down. Use plenty of clout nails on the overlaps and you won't need those battens running up the roof either.

 

[matei]

Thanks for the advice guys. The wood appears to be in decent shape, I'll expose them to the scorching sun here in Bucks and then treat them - then re-felt.

Thanks again!