Slipped tiles: fix now or wait?

One slipped tile is a cheap repair. Left a winter, it becomes a damp ceiling. Here is how to spot the warning signs from the ground.

A single slipped tile is one of the cheapest jobs we do. The same tile left through a West Midlands winter is how people end up with a stained bedroom ceiling, wet insulation and a bill twenty times bigger. The gap between those two outcomes is usually a few months.

How to check from the ground

• Stand back across the road and look along the tile lines. A tile out of line, lifted at one corner or showing a dark gap is the obvious tell.
• Look at the ridge. Missing mortar, a hairline crack running along the bedding or a ridge tile sitting proud all mean water is getting in at the top.
• Check the verges — the sloping edges. Crumbling mortar there lets wind under the tiles, which lifts more of them.
• Look for tile fragments or grit in the gutters and on the path. That is a tile breaking up, not just dirt.
• Inside, look at the loft in daylight with the light off. Pinpricks of daylight or damp staining on the felt mark the spot.

What happens if you leave it

Water does not drip straight down. It runs along a batten, soaks the felt, then finds a joint and appears in a completely different room from the hole. By the time a ceiling stains, the timber above it has usually been wet for weeks. Wet insulation stops insulating, plaster blows, and in a cold snap trapped water freezes and lifts the tiles either side of the original one.

A slipped tile is a repair. A slipped tile plus one winter is a roof section, plasterwork and insulation.

When it is genuinely not urgent

Not everything needs a van the same week. A single cracked tile over an unheated garage, or a hairline crack on a verge with sound mortar behind it, can be booked in with other work. What should never wait is anything at the ridge, anything above a bedroom or bathroom, or anything you can see daylight through from the loft.

What a repair usually costs

Most single-tile and small ridge repairs in Birmingham and Solihull land between £120 and £380 depending on access and whether a tower is needed. Re-bedding and re-pointing a full ridge is typically £450 to £900. If we are already up there and the rest of the roof is tired, it is often worth pricing a coating at the same time so you only pay for access once.

Send us a photo from the ground and we will tell you honestly whether it needs doing this month or can wait until spring.

Why tiles slip in the first place

It is very rarely the tile’s fault. On roofs built from the 1960s to the 1980s, the usual culprit is nail fatigue: the galvanised nails holding the tiles corrode and finally let go, so the tile slides down the batten. Perished underfelt is the second cause — once the felt goes brittle at the eaves, wind gets under the covering and lifts it. After that come failed mortar bedding at the ridge and verge, and the aftermath of a storm or someone walking the roof without crawl boards.

Please do not go up there yourself

Every year we get called to jobs that started as one slipped tile and turned into a cracked run of six because someone walked across concrete tiles in trainers. A ladder against a gutter also pulls the gutter off its brackets. It is not worth it for a £150 repair, and a fall from roof height is exactly as serious as it sounds.

What a proper repair visit includes

• A look at the whole roof, not just the tile you rang about — nail fatigue rarely affects one tile in isolation.
• Matching the tile. We carry common West Midlands concrete and clay profiles, and can source reclaimed tiles for older roofs.
• Re-securing neighbouring tiles and checking the felt underneath at the same time.
• A photo record of what we found and what we did, so you are not taking our word for it.

After the repair

If you have had two or three separate repairs in as many years, that is your roof telling you the fixings are at the end of their life. At that point it is worth pricing a strip and re-lay against a coating with repairs included, so you stop paying for scaffold every eighteen months.