Although roofing felt will protect your home from inclement weather for a good number of years, it can suffer from wear and tear, so should be checked on a regular basis.
The felt can tear or even crack, resulting in water penetration through the roofing structure. This can cause damp patches on the ceilings in your home, and if the problem is severe, can cause significant damage.
There are a number of different roof felt solutions currently available, with torch-on felt currently proving to be the most popular.
What does roofing felt do?
Roofing felt prevents water ingress into your home by providing a watertight barrier over the roof structure. While it may not be as structural or long lasting as tiles, it is a viable solution, especially on flat roofs.
What are the different types of roof felt?
Traditional roofing felt is simply laid over your roof and fixed into place using a separate adhesive or fixings. It's cheap to buy and simple to fit. Torch-on roofing felt has a layer of felt which melts on contact with heat. The user simply has to €˜torch-on' the felt to the roof by heating the underside before fitting to provide a weather tight seal. This is much quicker and easier to use than the older method of pour-and-roll bitumen which is both quite a skilled job to finish neatly and can be quite dangerous. The bitumen is heated in a large burner on the ground and then is transferred in buckets, up ladders to the roof. This is inherently dangerous, frequently results in burns to the person carrying the bucket and demands at least two people to get the job done properly.
Modern bitumenous roofing felt is safer and neater to install, requires less skill to get a beautiful flat surface, can be adequately installed by a single person if necessary and is much less prone to having difficult to detect leaks where water is finding it's way past the bitumen layer.
