Slate Roofing in Falkirk & Central Scotland

Most of the slate on Falkirk’s older roofs came out of Scottish quarries: Ballachulish in Argyll, the Slate Islands around Easdale, and the Highland Line quarries at Aberfoyle and Luss, barely an hour up the road. Those quarries are all shut, the last at Ballachulish in 1955, so every Scotch slate laid today is a reclaimed one. That single fact drives a lot of the cost and skill in slate work.

Scottish slate was never made in neat uniform sizes. It came off the quarry face in mixed sizes and thicknesses, so slaters laid it in diminishing courses: the biggest, heaviest slates at the eaves, getting steadily smaller towards the ridge. It was fixed with a single nail per slate straight into sarking boards, a continuous deck of timber over the rafters. English roofs are usually slated onto battens with two nails per slate and nothing solid underneath; a Scottish roof is boarded because the weather here demanded it, and that sarking is a big part of why these houses are so rigid and wind-resistant.

Nail sickness is what happens when the original iron nails, usually well over 100 years old, rust through. The slate itself is sound but it has nothing holding it and slides out of position. You can spot it from the ground: slates slipping in several places at once, and a scattering of small lead or copper straps (tingles) where previous roofers have hooked slipped slates back. A handful of tingles is normal maintenance. Dozens across one roof means the fixings have reached the end and the slate needs lifted and re-laid. Our post on how long slate and tiled roofs last goes through the other things that shorten a roof’s life.

There is no rule that says a slate roof of a certain age must be replaced. We look at four things, and we photograph what we find rather than asking you to take our word for it.

1. How many slates have moved. Fewer than one in ten slipped or tingled, with the rest lying tight, usually means the fixings still have life in them. A repair is the right answer.
2. The condition of the slate itself. Good Scotch slate rings when tapped and shows a clean edge. Slate that is going soft, flaking in layers or crumbling at the nail hole will not survive being lifted and re-laid, and that changes the sums.
3. What is underneath. A look in the loft tells us whether the sarking boards are sound, whether there is any old felt or none at all, and whether water has been getting into the timbers.
4. The leadwork and pointing. Flashings, valleys and ridge often fail before the slate does. Sometimes what looks like a tired slate roof is really a tired lead roof with good slate on it.

Roughly, a roof with fewer than 10% of slates moved and sound sarking is a repair job at a few hundred pounds. A roof with 20% or more slipped, tingles everywhere and rusty nails coming out in your hand is ready for a strip and re-slate, and patching it further is money spent on a roof that will keep failing. In between, we will often suggest an overhaul: re-laying the elevation that faces the weather, renewing the leadwork and ridge, and leaving the sound side alone.

The reason re-slating is worth it is the lifespan. Good Scottish slate comfortably outlasts the people who lay it; well over 100 years is normal, and the reclaimed slates we re-use are often on their second roof. Copper or stainless nails, a breathable membrane over the sarking and fresh lead mean the new fixings should last as long again. For most owners it is the last roof they will ever buy.

Matching is the question we are asked most, and the honest answer is that it takes effort. Scottish slate varies from the blue-grey of Ballachulish to the purplish and greenish tones of the Highland Line quarries, and it is thicker and rougher than most imported slate. For repairs we source reclaimed Scotch slate and size it to your courses so the patch disappears. For a full re-slate we grade and re-use as many of your own slates as are sound, then make up the shortfall with matching reclaimed stock.

Where reclaimed slate is not the right choice, we will tell you the trade-offs. Spanish slate is the most common new natural slate in Scotland and is good value; Welsh slate is the finest and the priciest; Brazilian slate is cheaper still but quality varies between quarries, so we are careful about which we use. The guide-price table below puts numbers on the difference.

On consent: in Arnothill, Dollar Park or the town-centre conservation area, like-for-like repair with matching natural slate needs no permission. Changing the covering, for example from slate to concrete tile or to fibre-cement, generally needs planning permission from Falkirk Council in a conservation area, and a listed building needs listed building consent for anything that changes its character, which a roof covering does. A building warrant is normally not needed to re-cover a roof in the same material, but it can be if you switch to a heavier one. We check this before we quote, so you are never left with an enforcement letter after the scaffold comes down.

On the slate roofs we survey around Falkirk, the leak is rarely the slate. It is the junctions: the stepped flashing where a chimney meets the roof, the soakers under the slates at an abutment, the back gutter behind a stack, and the valleys where two pitches meet. Lead has a long life, often 60 to 100 years, but Victorian lead is now at or past that, and it splits along creases or lifts where the fixings have gone.

We use the right weight of lead for each detail and dress it by hand rather than relying on sealant, which is a temporary fix on a roof like this. If a chimney needs re-flashing we check its flaunching and pointing at the same time, because the scaffold is the expensive part of the job and it makes no sense to pay for it twice. See our leadwork in Falkirk and chimney repairs in Falkirk pages for the detail on each.

Every job starts with a free, no-obligation survey, Monday to Saturday between 9 and 5. You get a fixed written price that itemises scaffolding, stripping, sarking repairs, membrane, where the slates are coming from, fixings, leadwork, ridge, waste removal and a timescale. A slipped-slate repair takes an hour or two. A full re-slate on a semi typically takes one to two weeks and a large villa two to four, weather allowing, and you stay in the house throughout. All workmanship carries our 10-year guarantee. If a storm has taken slates off, ring us first so we can make it safe, then read how we handle storm damage roof repairs in Falkirk, including the insurance report.