Leadwork Roofers in Birmingham
Moseley Roofing & Building Services

Lead Work on Birmingham Roofs

Lead work is the craft part of roofing. Flashing at a chimney, soakers under the tiles, a valley lining between two slopes, an apron at an abutment: wherever two materials meet, lead is what stops the rain finding the gap. Get it right and it will outlast most of the roof around it. Get it wrong and the leak shows up indoors, sometimes a long way from the joint itself.

We are based in Moseley (B14) and work across Birmingham and the surrounding areas on lead work of every size, from a single cracked flashing to a full set of soakers on a slate roof. Every job starts with a free inspection and an honest quote, so you know what you are dealing with before anyone commits.

The Places a Roof Needs Lead

Walk any Birmingham street and the lead is hiding in plain sight. It is doing its job wherever the roof changes direction or meets something that is not a roof:

• Flashing where a chimney stack meets the roof tiles.
• Soakers and cover flashing along a brick abutment or party wall.
• Valley linings where two slopes drain into one channel.
• Apron and step flashing around dormers and porch roofs.
• Lead flat coverings on bays and older extensions.

Each of these is a junction, and each junction moves a little with the weather. Lead copes with that movement better than almost any other roofing material, which is why it has held its place for centuries.

What Goes Wrong With Lead Work

Lead is durable but it is not invincible, and most of the call-outs we get fall into a short list:

• Cracked or split flashing, often where the lead was dressed too thin at a corner.
• Soakers that have slipped or corroded out of sight under the tiles.
• Mortar fillets that have cracked away from a stack and left the lead doing a job it was never dressed for.
• Old lead fatigued by decades of expanding and contracting.
• Lead stripped by thieves, leaving an open joint on the roof.

Water follows the joint downhill, so the stain indoors can sit a room away from the lead that failed. That is why an inspection beats a guess: we trace the water back to the joint before we quote anything.

Repairing or Replacing Lead Work

A small crack in a sound piece of lead can sometimes be patched, and a slipped soaker can be refixed without touching the rest of the roof. Where the lead has fatigued or was dressed badly in the first place, the honest answer is to cut it out and dress new lead in its place.

Lead comes in different thicknesses, called codes, and the code has to suit the detail: a wide valley needs a heavier piece than a short flashing run. We quote for the detail the junction actually needs, not the cheapest patch that will hold until winter.

Lead is only one of the repair jobs we carry. The full range, from tiles to flat roofs, is on our roof repairs in Birmingham page, and the wider work we do sits on the roofers in Birmingham page.