Conservatory roof that forever leaks

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6 Oct 2003
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My father, a builder by trade, put up a conservatory. The council insisted on slates due to the area. The weather is terrible, especially in winter with strong winds and sheet rain. Anyway he died a year or so ago of cancer, leaving my 68 year old mother with a house that leaks.

I was wondering what options people could suggest to fix this roof. To me the angle looks too shallow. All the water from the main roof runs onto this conservatory roof and down inside into the conservatory, rather than into the guttering at the front.

Some possible solutions I thought of:

Raise the roof level. Probably expensive.

Replace it with a flat room and put the original guttering back on the main roof.

Install something like gutting on the join of the roof, such that the water is taken along this and down guttering to the side, away from the conservatory roof.

Replace the conservatory roof underneath with something water tight. Currently its felt with a pond liner over the top of this with the tiles glued to the conservatory roof. Although this sound really weird, tiles need to be nailed, so any waterproof covering will instantly have a million holes in it. I think towards the end my father became rather desperate to keep the water out.

It seems that some leading is missing where the roof would join, or at least it looks like this from the picture. I have not clue about constructing such a roof join, but I'm sure there are plenty of guys here who do.

The house is in Brittany and my mother has not a lot of money to fix this. We'd appreciate any advice on what the option might be. Thanks.

Please see attached images.
 
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Normally the tiles or slates on a roof are overlapped so that water runs off one and onto another.IIRC with slates you need to overlap them such that only a third of each slate is visible.

At an angle change you can't really do that so II would expect a WIDE strip (so the normal overlaps are maintained) of some pliable material (roofing felt is the cheap and nasty option, lead is the longer life option) that was *under* the tiles/slates on the upper part and *over* the tiles/slates on the upper part so it collects the water from the upper part and deposits it onto the lower part

There seems to be some sort of strip in the picture but it looks way too narrow to my untrained eye and the slates on top of it look a ghastly mess.
 
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TBH it does look like you need a roofer or to spend several days with some help doing it yourself.

I'm no roofer but I'd take the tiles off (in the summer) and re roof it, line it so it is waterproof, then put the tiles on neatly & better than that.

If you want it dry inside then this is going to cost you to sort it out, waterproofing does not come in a tin for this.
 
I'm not a roofer, but looks like there's no flashing on the chimney?
 

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