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Stripping a slate roof


Conor

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I'm struggling to find somebody to strip our 100m² slated hipped roof. Considering doing it myself with a working platform and telehandler to take the pallets. 

 

Intention is to reclaim the slates for either reuse or sale. Valued at £2 each.

 

I've found guides for removing and repairing small sections of roofs using a ripper bar. Is that the same way you'd tackle a whole roof or can you just pull the slates up once you get going?

 

Roof is in poor condition, I think the nails are iron rather than copper.

 

Is it a big job?

 

 

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40 minutes ago, RichS said:

Start at the ridge and work down, simples !

 

Do you need a ripper bar or could I lever them up with a normal crow bar once the ridge tiles are off?

21 minutes ago, scottishjohn said:

sell them where they are ?buyer removes

Have somebody coming round for a look on Friday. But I know he'll probably only offer 25p or 50p a slate.

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It’s a lot quicker than you would think 

myself and my wife stripped ours 

We used a short pri bar the type with a rounded end with a nail pul on either end Start at the top and let them slide down to your helper 

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I think it depends on the state of the nails, if they are sound you will  break a percentage, if crap then more saved?. So much easier with two people, one to strip and one to catch and stack. I would put scaffold up if it were me, much better platform to work from, you could do an elevation at a time and move the scaff as it’s mostly single story.

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38 minutes ago, Conor said:

 

Do you need a ripper bar or could I lever them up with a normal crow bar once the ridge tiles are off?

Have somebody coming round for a look on Friday. But I know he'll probably only offer 25p or 50p a slate.

but by the time you count up scaffolding costs and time --maybe a not so bad

  i would do a deal for the whole roof at beginning -then its up to him how many he breaks 

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You don't need a slate ripper. They're really designed for ripping out a nail 'mid roof' so you can replace a slate(s).

Work from the top. The trick is to remove the nails without placing pressure on the tile so your lever point needs to be above the tile not on the tile.

 

Its a bungalow so personally I'd work from a scaffold tower*. You can slide each free slate down the roof to your 'mate' who will batch and stack.

You could even make a start and then work from inside the loft.

 

As others have said is surprisingly quick and simple. If the nails are rotten you'll probably find the nail heads will simply snap off. 

 

*H&S exempt comment. Do your own risk assessment. 

 

 

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16 minutes ago, Barney12 said:

 

You could even make a start and then work from inside the loft.

 

 

 

That was my thinking. If I can get the ridge tiles and first two rows of slates off, I can do 80% of the work from the inside. Would just be the very bottom rows I couldn't do.

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4 hours ago, Barney12 said:

You could even make a start and then work from inside the loft.

We did that in our last house. I took them off, put them in a metal bin and let them down on a rope to Wendy who cleaned and stacked them. Around 6000 IIRC and I have a lovely picture of Wendy sitting on a crate surrounded by them all cleaning them.

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Are you able to work from inside .  This is what I did. Safer and easier.   The tile nails often protruded from inside the sarking  boards so by hammering from inside this caused the nail to protrude from outside the tile and was just a case of pulling them out or using the tile itself as a lever.  The slate ripper I bought was useless I used a combination of crowbars and levers.  Initially lost/broke about 30% of the tiles but by the end I was losing almost none as I developed the best technique.  I had some lawn nearby and just threw them onto it.

 

Don’t bin the broken tiles sell them on Facebook people use them for garden borders if you don’t need them for that.  I found the last couple of rows at the bottom most difficult to get out.

 

Easy job (in the summer).  If you have limited time don’t waste ten mins trying to get out a single difficult tile.  Use the time to get the easy wins the ones that come out easiest.  I really enjoyed doing it tbh.  Nice clean job.  

 

 

 

 

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  • 3 weeks later...

Progress so far. Rain stopped play today. I'm getting about half a roof side done per day. Doing it as a mix between inside the roof for the higher rows and climbing on the sarking for lower rows. Letting them slide down into a high sides pallet on the telehandler. Recovering more than half the slates. Hope it's worth it!

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