18/08/2026
Here’s what happens on day 1 of your roof replacement:
1. Strip Off
Your roof will be fully stripped off. In most cases it will be stripped back to the rafters. If you have sarking boards, and they are still in good condition, we’d strip to the sarking and repair where necessary.
2. 11mm OSB Boards
Once the rafters are exposed, we deck the roof with 11mm OSB (oriented strand board). This isn’t just a base to work from — it ties the whole roof structure together, adds rigidity, and gives us a solid, continuous surface to fix everything else to. It also means no more gaps between old-style battens where wind and rain could sneak through, and it upgrades the roof’s structural performance well beyond what most older roofs originally had.
3. Eaves Trays
Fitted at the bottom edge of the roof, eaves trays guide water from the underlay down into the gutter rather than letting it drip behind the fascia or soak into the timber. They also maintain a small ventilation gap at the eaves, which is essential for letting the roof space breathe and avoiding condensation problems down the line.
4. Counter Battens
These run vertically, up the roof slope, fixed over the OSB and underlay. Their job is to create a ventilated gap between the underlay and the tile battens above. That gap lets any moisture that gets through drain and evaporate away instead of sitting against the timber — a key part of a “ventilated and drained” roof system to modern standards.
5. Treated Tile Battens
These run horizontally across the counter battens, and this is what the tiles actually hang and fix onto. Using treated timber means the battens resist rot and insect attack over the roof’s lifetime — critical, since replacing battens later means stripping the tiles off again. Correct batten gauge (spacing) is also what keeps every course of tiles sitting at the right overlap for a watertight roof.