Roofing in Blockhouse Bay: Manukau-Facing Roof Repairs

Roofing in Blockhouse Bay

• A mix of eras
• Coastal exposure
• Harbour edge
• Hillside sections
• Wind exposure

Blockhouse Bay sits on the north shore of the Manukau Harbour, with a small beach, a village shopping strip along Blockhouse Bay Road and plenty of streets climbing up from the water. For a roofer it is a suburb of views and wind. Houses perched to catch the harbour outlook also catch whatever weather blows in off the Manukau, and a lot of our time here goes into keeping older roofs tight against that exposure.

Homes in Blockhouse Bay

The suburb grew in stages. There are interwar bungalows near the village and the older roads, a large spread of 1950s and 60s weatherboard and brick homes, and 1970s houses on the steeper streets toward the coast. More recently, sections have been subdivided for townhouses and units. You can easily find a 1930s bungalow, a 1960s brick-and-tile and a new plaster townhouse on the same block.

The roofs we work on here

Concrete tiles and decramastic pressed-metal tiles are everywhere on the postwar houses, with corrugated iron on the older bungalows. Decramastic is the one we watch closest here. Once the stone chip wears off, the steel underneath rusts, and on the harbour side that happens faster. Concrete tiles tend to lose their ridge bedding and crack where people have walked on them to clean spouting. Typical work is tile restoration and repainting, replacing rusted decramastic with long-run, and re-pointing ridges that have loosened in storms. Spouting on the exposed streets also tends to corrode at the brackets well before the roof itself is finished.

Weather and exposure

The Manukau side of Auckland gets the prevailing south-westerlies straight off the water, and Blockhouse Bay has very little shelter on its upper slopes. Salt reaches further inland than people think, so unwashed areas under eaves and behind fascia boards corrode first. Strong gusts lift loose ridge caps and flashings. In the gullies and the bush reserves near the coast, shade and leaf litter add moss and blocked spouting to the list.

Typical roofing jobs in Blockhouse Bay

• Replacing a rusting decramastic tile roof on a 1960s house with long-run Colorsteel and new flashings
• Cleaning, repairing and repainting a concrete tile roof, including re-bedding and re-pointing loose ridge caps
• Re-securing wind-lifted barge and ridge flashings on a harbour-facing home after a south-westerly storm
• Swapping corroded galvanised spouting for continuous Colorsteel spouting fitted with marine-suitable brackets and new downpipes

Services most asked for here

• Roof RepairsLeaks, cracked tiles, rusted iron and failed flashings across every roof type.
• Roof ReplacementFull re-roofs in Colorsteel, long-run iron or tile when repair no longer pays.
• Roof RestorationClean, repair and re-coat to add years to a tile or metal roof.
• Gutters & SpoutingNew spouting, downpipes and gutter repairs.

Blockhouse Bay roofing questions