It can, it usually should, and it should generally happen early. There is also a regulatory point that catches people out on larger renovations, and it is worth knowing before the programme is set.
Yes, and a renovation is usually the best moment to do it. A roof that will need replacing within a few years should be done as part of the project rather than after it, and the reasons are practical rather than sentimental.
What matters more than whether is when, and there is one regulatory point on larger renovations that catches people out. Both are covered below.
Everything that follows is vulnerable to water from above. Plaster, decoration, flooring, joinery, electrics, insulation — all of it can be ruined by a roof that lets go in the middle of the internal programme. Doing the roof first removes the single largest risk to everything downstream.
Roofing is the trade most exposed to conditions. Putting it early gives the programme somewhere to absorb bad weather. Putting it last means a wet fortnight delays the completion of the whole project rather than one phase of it.
A strip is the one opportunity to see the roof structure properly. If anything needs doing to the rafters, purlins or wall plates, you want to know before internal finishes are up, not after.
This is where the real money is. A scaffold erected for the roof can serve chimney work, pointing, rendering, upper-floor windows, fascias, soffits and guttering — if the programme puts those trades in sequence behind the roofer. Erecting it twice is one of the commonest avoidable costs on a renovation.
For an ordinary re-roof, the position is straightforward: renewing the covering renews a thermal element, and regulation 23 of the Building Regulations 2010 requires that element's thermal performance to be improved where technically and economically feasible. Approved Document L Volume 1 gives a roof U-value of 0.16 W/(m²K) for an existing dwelling.
On a whole-house renovation there is a second threshold. Regulation 35(1) defines a "major renovation" as work to more than 25% of the surface area of the whole building envelope — not 25% of the roof, which is the version everyone repeats and which has not been the test since regulation 23 was substituted in January 2013. The envelope means the whole external skin: walls, roof, floors, windows and doors together.
On a project doing the roof, re-rendering, replacing the windows and insulating walls, that 25% of the total envelope is easy to cross without anyone noticing, and crossing it brings wider consequential requirements into play. This is a conversation to have with building control at Cheshire East Council at the design stage, not once the work is running.
Macclesfield has two Article 4(2) directions — High Street, confirmed in 1985, and Christ Church, confirmed in 1990 — and Cheshire East states that owners in those areas will find it necessary to apply for planning permission for most external alterations.
On a renovation that is a programme issue as much as a cost one. If the project involves changing the roof covering, altering the roof line, new rooflights, or anything else visible from outside, the application has to be in early enough not to hold up the scaffold. A like-for-like re-roof, by contrast, does not materially affect external appearance and so is not development at all under section 55 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990.
Where the renovation involves a silk-era property with a habitable roof space, the insulation has to go at rafter level. That decision interacts with everything else: insulating over the rafters raises the roof line, which is an external alteration; insulating under them costs head height and affects the internal finishes, which means it has to be settled before the plasterer is booked.
On a renovation this is an advantage rather than a problem, because you are already working inside. The retrofit that is disruptive on an occupied house is straightforward on a stripped one.
If a conversion is anywhere in the plan, doing it with the re-roof is substantially better than doing it afterwards. The roof is open, so structural alterations, insulation at rafter level, rooflights or dormers, and the covering can be designed as one thing.
Retrofitting a conversion under a roof finished two years earlier means disturbing new work, and often means the insulation strategy is compromised by decisions already made. It also means a second scaffold.
The caveat is that it has to be planned as one project. A roofer working to a re-roof specification and a conversion designed later will not meet in the middle by themselves — particularly on rafter depth, which is the detail that most often forces a rethink.
The principle is simple: everything that needs access from outside happens in one scaffold period, and nothing internal and vulnerable starts until the building is weathertight above it.
Talk to us early. Where the roof sits in the programme affects every trade that follows it.
Roof replacement in Macclesfield →
All roof replacement guides →
Roof Replacement Cheshire →
Early, in almost every case. It makes the building weathertight, it is the trade most affected by weather, and everything that follows — plastering, decorating, flooring, electrics — is vulnerable to water coming in from above. Doing the roof after the internal finishes is how newly plastered ceilings get ruined.
Usually yes, and it is one of the larger savings available on a renovation. Roofing, chimney work, rendering, pointing, window replacement at upper levels, fascias and guttering can all share a scaffold if the programme is arranged so they follow one another.
It can. Beyond the ordinary rule for a renewed thermal element, regulation 35(1) defines a "major renovation" as work to more than 25% of the surface area of the whole building envelope, which brings wider consequential requirements into play. On a whole-house project that threshold is easy to cross without noticing.
It is the best possible moment to do it, because the roof is open and the structural work, the insulation and the covering can all be designed together rather than retrofitted around each other. It needs planning as one project, though, not as two jobs that happen to overlap.
Apex Roofing covers Cheshire and the surrounding area for complete roof replacement, new slate and tiled roofs and re-roofing.
Apex Roofing Cheshire · 105 Fence House, Fence Avenue, Macclesfield SK10 1LM
Tell us about the property and the roof in Macclesfield, and we will come back to you — usually the same day.
Prefer to talk? Call 07377 461095 · WhatsApp +44 7465 861265 · Email apexroofing14@gmail.com
