Flat roofs and EPDM in Gloucester
Failed felt on extensions, dormers and garages stripped back and replaced with fully bonded EPDM rubber — with new trims, upstands and outlets.
Why old felt roofs fail
Most flat roofs in Gloucester sit on rear extensions, dormers, porches and garages built from the 1960s onwards, and most were originally covered in built-up bitumen felt. Felt has a working life of roughly fifteen to twenty years. It goes brittle with UV, then cracks along the seams and at the upstands where it was never fully bonded in the first place, and once water gets into the deck below the timber goes quickly.
The giveaways are blistering, ponding that never dries out, gravel washed into bare patches, and a damp line appearing on the ceiling just inside the outside wall.
Why we fit EPDM
- One sheet, no seams – on most domestic roofs the membrane is cut as a single piece, so there are no joints across the field to fail.
- No hot works – it is bonded with adhesive, not torched, which matters on an extension attached to your house.
- Stays flexible – rubber moves with the deck through temperature swings instead of going brittle like felt.
- Long service life – properly laid EPDM is a multi-decade covering, not a fifteen-year one.
What a proper flat roof job includes
The membrane is the easy part. What decides whether a flat roof lasts is everything around the edges: a sound, dry deck (we replace boards rather than laying over wet ones), correct falls so water actually reaches the outlet, properly formed upstands where the roof meets the wall, lead or GRP cover flashings dressed over the top, and aluminium trims at the drip edges. We do all of that as standard and will show you the deck before it gets covered.
Flat roofs carry the same 20 year full written guarantee on workmanship and materials as our pitched work.
Warm deck, cold deck and insulation
If you are re-covering an extension roof it is often the moment to upgrade the insulation, particularly if the room below has always been cold. A warm deck build-up puts insulation above the deck and under the membrane, which avoids the condensation problems that come with poorly ventilated cold decks. We will talk through whether it is worth the extra build height on your roof.
Also see guttering and fascias — flat roof outlets and the gutter they discharge into are usually worth doing at the same time.
Flat roof past its best?
We will tell you whether the deck is salvageable and price a proper EPDM re-cover in writing.
Gloucester Roofing Company 247
Local roofers covering Gloucester GL1–GL4 and around twenty miles beyond, including Cheltenham, Churchdown, Quedgeley, Hardwicke, Tewkesbury, Newent and Stroud.