Roof replacement - sooner or s-later?

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Hi all

A friend of mine is purchasing a Victorian era cottage with a pitched slate roof. He has sent me pictures and the comments from the surveyor. The surveyor commented that the roof slates, particularly at the front elevation, need some remedial work and that the whole roof is likely to need to be replaced in the near future (5 years was the time he put on it).

I have renovated a fair few Victorian era properties and on the whole the roofs have been in decent condition and have only required minor repairs but they have always had interlocking concrete tiles and I have never actually worked on a slate roof.

So I would appreciate some professional eyes cast over the photos with any tips? I know without further photos of the timbers etc it is hard to determine the 'health' of the roof but any advice gratefully received.

Particular questions:

What are your general feelings on the state of the roof?

I'm familiar with the process of using a slate ripper to replace individual tiles, but in practice is it something a confident DIY'er like myself can do or is it something that is trickier than it looks?

What would be a rough price for a roof replacement of this kind and is it more typical and cheaper to re-use the slates or replace with fibre cement slates?

Cheers


 
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The front lope is in quite a poor state. The question of replacing now or in 5 years comes down to budget, as every time you have to spend on repairing the roof and making good to any decoration that is damaged inside this money could be used towards the cost of a roof replacement.

As a rough guide replacement roof would be approx. £50 perm for cement fibre slates or £60 for natural Spanish slates.

It may be possible to re use a lot of the existing slates but a proper inspection would need to be made of the slate quality.
 
Thanks palaceray.

I take it that these prices assume the timbers are in a decent, reusable condition and are just for labour and material cost of removal and replacement of the slates and ridge tiles along with making good of flashing, mortar etc? The cost of scaffold would also add to the total and if the timbers were rotten then the cost would be significantly higher?
 
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