The order things happen in
After a bad night the temptation is to get someone to fix everything immediately. That is usually the wrong order and it costs more. What actually needs to happen first is making the building watertight and safe: sheeting over an opening, taking down anything hanging that could fall, clearing a blocked gutter that is backing water up under the tiles.
Then comes the part everyone skips - recording it. Before I touch anything I photograph what failed and where, because once a roof has been made safe there is nothing left to show an insurer. After that we can talk about the permanent repair in daylight, at a sensible price, rather than at nine on a Sunday night.
What tends to go first
Ridge and hip tiles, almost always. They sit on mortar, they are the highest and most exposed thing on the building, and when the bedding has dried out over a long Kent summer they are held on by habit more than anything else. After that: dry verges lifting along the gable, lead flashing peeling out of a chimney, and felt at the eaves tearing where it has gone brittle.
Why the north-easterlies do the damage here
Herne Bay looks north over the Thames Estuary, and that changes which storms matter. The named Atlantic systems that flatten the west country often arrive here softened and from the wrong angle to do much. What hurts is a hard north-easterly coming down the North Sea and across open water with nothing in the way - no hills, no next street, no shelter at all until it reaches the back of your house.
That matters because roofs are lapped and detailed on the assumption that the worst weather comes from the prevailing direction. Wind arriving from the other side gets under the lap instead of over it, and finds the verge and ridge details that were never the exposed side. It is why the damage on a Herne Bay street after an easterly is so often on the seaward slope of houses that have stood through decades of south-westerlies without trouble.
What to do before I get there
- Move what you can out from under any drip, and put a bucket down. A ceiling that has a puddle above it can come down in one go.
- If a ceiling is bulging and holding water, pierce it deliberately with a screwdriver over a bucket. Sounds wrong, saves the whole ceiling.
- Photograph everything from the ground, including debris in the garden before you tidy it away.
- Keep off the roof, and keep other people away from the base of the wall where anything is hanging loose.
Being straight about the storm-chasers
Every serious storm brings people door-knocking within about forty-eight hours, offering to sort your roof while they are "working on a job up the road". Some are fine. Plenty are not, and the pattern is predictable: a large cash figure, urgency, work starting immediately, and no paperwork at the end of it.
You do not need to be rude about it - just do not agree to anything on the doorstep. Take a name and a number, say you will ring them back, and compare it against a quote from someone whose van has been parked in the same town for years. If a job genuinely needs doing today, a second opinion tomorrow morning will not change that.