A spell of strong wind is often followed by a walk around the garden collecting broken tile fragments, or a phone call from a neighbour mentioning tiles seen on the road. Across Hanham, where roofs range from older clay tile coverings to more recent concrete tile replacements, high winds are one of the most common causes of visible roof damage, and it's rarely just the one tile that's affected by the same gust of wind. Cracked tiles are sometimes easy to miss because the two halves can stay roughly in place for a while, held only by their own weight and the tiles overlapping them.
Broken tiles are usually straightforward to spot from the ground, cracked pieces or gaps where a tile has clearly come away, but missing tiles can be harder to notice unless you know roughly what the roofline should look like beforehand. A pair of binoculars from the garden, or better still a proper inspection, will pick up gaps that aren't obvious from a casual glance upward, particularly on a steeper or less visible rear slope of the roof that's harder to view from the street. A tile that looks slightly discoloured or lighter than its neighbours can be a sign it's cracked right through, since moisture behaves differently once a tile has genuinely split.
The main risk with broken or missing tiles isn't just the visible gap itself but what it exposes underneath. Roofing felt or membrane beneath the tiles offers only limited, short-term protection against the weather, so a gap left unrepaired through further rain can quickly lead to water tracking into the roof structure and, eventually, showing up as a leak indoors, sometimes weeks after the original storm that first caused the damage to begin with. It's worth checking gutters too after high winds, since fragments of broken tile can end up there, which is often a useful early clue that something has failed higher up.
It's also worth having any tiles near the damaged area checked, since wind strong enough to break or dislodge one tile has often loosened neighbouring ones too, even if they haven't fully failed yet. Catching these before they come loose in the next storm saves a repeat call-out and avoids the same problem happening all over again a few weeks down the line for the same reason. Even a single missing tile in a hard-to-reach spot, such as above a bay window or over a conservatory, is worth flagging rather than assuming it's too minor to matter.
Replacement tiles should match the existing roof as closely as possible in both colour and profile, particularly on older Hanham roofs where the original tiles may no longer be in current production, in which case a roofer experienced with reclaimed or closely matched materials makes a real difference to the finished look and how well the repair weathers alongside the surrounding tiles over the years. A roofer will usually check both the pitch that's obviously affected and the opposite slope too, since wind direction can shift partway through a storm and cause damage on more than one side.
If recent high winds have left your Hanham roof with broken or missing tiles, it's worth having it checked before the next spell of wet weather arrives. Brunel Roofing Bristol offers free inspections and can carry out repairs quickly, with a 15-year guarantee on completed work.
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