I have an 1880s terrace located in a conservation area in the Inner West of Sydney. Unfortunately with the recent heavy rain, the colourbond (?) roof has sprung a leak. It's not tragic, there aren't pools of water in the house but it's enough to be worried about. There is also an air con outdoor unit mounted on the roof (not in the leaking area). The air con unit is in good condition, having only been installed fairly recently. The roof itself is painted but underneath the sheets are rusty, so I'm fairly sure they've had their day. We want to replace the roof with new colourbond. I've looked at the CoS development conditions and can't find anything about roofs. Given that the roof is currently leaking, do I need to get permission to replace the roof? Can I replace it with any colour I like? It's currently a light grey colour - we'll probably put on something similar but it won't be identical. Thank you
I don't know anything about the "CoS development conditions" (perhaps check with local council), but unless you want the expense of a full strip/replace I'd get a couple of roof plumbers around to inspect, provide options. Maybe some sealant around joins etc has deteriorated, needs replacing.
What is the degree pitch on the roof? If it's 1-2 degrees, i.e almost flat, you need klip-lok roofing. Klip-lok has internal fixings so no screw holes etc for water to pool around. CoS specfied klip-lok on a family members terrace reno recently due to a low pitch.
It's about a 20 degree pitch. It's a flat roof terrace with a parapet at the front. From the front of the property there's no visibility of the roof at all and it slopes downward towards the rear. If we can avoid a DA just to replace a damaged roof that would be my preference of course.
Not sure about the DA aspect, because it's a new for old replacement you might not need it. If you need scaff on the footpath for the job you will need some sort of approval. Give the planners at CoS a call and ask the question, last thing you want is a new roof leaking because the wrong product was used. Could it be that the newly installed AC was installed in the roof poorly?
Have a chat to a planner at your council as noted above. Like for like eg galv with galv or same colour is usually OK without a DA. Remember that you can't use dissimilar materials (ie colourbond with glavanised due to differences in electrical potential if the materials/cathodic reaction).
Thank you. Yes it's possible that the air con installation may have caused the leak but the air con installers did say that the roof itself was not in great nick. Aesthetically it was fine as the colour bond had been painted so you couldn't tell that there was an issue. It wasn't until the installer lifted the sheets to do the install that he observed the panels were rusted. I'll give the council a call tomorrow, I've found so far that they tell me that a DA is pretty much needed for everything because of the conservation status, was hoping to avoid that!
Sounds like it's double roof sheets already,most times when someone walks on old roofs they damage the areas if the miss the battens,and the leak will be around the ac unit heat pump,only take a small surface crack..
If the leak is simply coming from a crack in the rib of the profiled sheet-metal this can simply be fixed by sealing the crack then screwing or riveting a small profiled sheet-metal cap over the crack. It is always best to have a thorough check above the leaking area first as replacing a roof is not only costly but also can be quite disruptive. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- www.fhsroofing.co.nz
