EPDM Rubber Roofing in Royal Wootton Bassett

Rubber suits anything with a simple shape and light foot traffic — garages, single-storey rear extensions, dormer cheeks and tops, porches, bay roofs and outbuildings. On those it is difficult to justify anything else on cost per year of service.

It is a poorer choice where the roof will be walked on regularly, used as a balcony or terrace, or carries plant and equipment. The membrane is tough but it is not rigid, and a surface underfoot every day wants the hardness of fibreglass. It is also less suited to roofs cut about with pipes, upstands and awkward junctions, where a liquid-applied system will detail more cleanly than sheet material can.

In fifteen years of these roofs coming back to us, the membrane itself has essentially never been the problem. What fails is everything around it: an edge trim that was omitted to save money, a perimeter bonded with the wrong adhesive, an outlet that was cut in without a purpose-made former, or a deck that was left damp under a new sheet.

So the specification that matters is unglamorous. A clean, dry, screwed-down deck, with new boards wherever the old ones are soft. Water-based adhesive across the field, contact adhesive at the perimeter and upstands, and proprietary trims at every gutter edge, kerb and abutment. Get those right and the roof becomes genuinely uneventful, which is the whole point of it.

Over habitable space, a rubber roof replacement is usually also an insulation upgrade whether you were planning one or not. Where you are replacing more than half the covering, building regulations expect the thermal performance to be brought up to current standards, which in practice means a warm-roof build-up: insulation boards above the deck, membrane above the insulation.

That raises the roof level slightly, which matters at door thresholds and where the roof meets a window above, and it is worth flagging at quote stage rather than discovering on day two. It also removes the condensation risk entirely, which on a kitchen or bathroom extension is worth as much as the heat saved.

Edge trims and outlet details included. Deck repairs itemised after strip-up rather than assumed, because nobody honestly knows the state of the boards until the old covering is off.