30's roof lined inside?

[bancey]

Apologies before I start, I know nothing about roofing.

I'm looking at buying a medium sized 30's house which looks to be in good nick, possibly excepting the roof. The tiles look pretty old (original?), there's definitely some guttering which needs emptying/re-routing to stop water pouring down from some dormer windows, but I'm more concerned about the fact that when we went in the loft, everything up there was covered in red dust and flakes.

Strangely, where you'd expect to see the black liner between the rafters, there's timber - tightly packed planks used to line the space between the rafters and the tiles outside. It looks to be in good condition and dry, but I've never seen this before. Also weird is that the gaps between the planks are tiny, so I wonder where/when all the dust/bits of tile came in.

I'm going to get it surveyed of course, but I wondered whether any of you had any ideas meanwhile! Thanks in advance,

Paula

 

[datarebal]

1930s houses with underlay/felt were few and far between. Probably without seeing myself this roof is either close boarded on top of the rafters with batten and tiles or slate on these. or it could be feather edge board which act as tile batten and small plain tiles on these.. without a picture not much else can be said.

 

[bancey]

Thanks, well at least it doesn't sound completely irregular!

I've attempted to add a couple of pics:

This is the boarding between the rafters (also looks like a new purlin?)

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• bancey
• 15 Aug 2010
• 1

These show the dust/flakes:

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• bancey
• 15 Aug 2010
• 1

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• bancey
• 15 Aug 2010
• 1

Finally, this gives some idea of the roof in general:

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• bancey
• 15 Aug 2010
• 1

Thanks again.

 

[joinerjohn]

What you have there is a traditional close boarded roof. The red dust, is exactly as you describe, It's bits of the roof tiles being blown in by the wind. Fine enough to get between the timbers and drop into the roof space and nothing to worry about.

 

[datarebal]

if there is a lot of dust generally get someone to lift a tile or two to check their top edges.. if your lucky it wont be an issue..but it could be.

 

[bancey]

Thanks both. I've heard of delamination...could this be the reason for all the dust (if it is problematic)?

 

[datarebal]

possible but hard to tell from the pictures, not all clay tiles delaminate but some of those that don't suffer from deteriation around the top of the tile to the point of the nibs will become non existent.. I would get it checked out, unless of course you are going to re roof after you buy...