Broken roof tile replacement matched to the roof you have

A tile roof keeps water out by overlap. Each tile sheds rain onto the tile below it and the tile beside it, and the whole roof works as long as every tile is whole and sitting where it was laid. Crack one, and water runs through the crack onto whatever is under it.

What is under it depends on the age of the house. Roofs built or re-roofed in the last few decades usually have sarking, a reflective foil membrane laid over the rafters before the battens went on. It catches the water from a cracked tile and carries it down to the gutter, which is why a broken tile can go unnoticed for a year or more. But sarking is not a second roof. Water pooling on it rots the battens and rafters it lies against, finds every staple hole, and, once the membrane tears or sags, drops straight onto the ceiling below.

Older roofs across Melbourne, including most of the terracotta roofs on period homes, have no sarking at all. There, a cracked tile leaks onto the ceiling the first time it rains hard, and the timber and plaster under it are wet from that day on.

Either way, the tile is the cheap part. The battens, the insulation, the ceiling plaster and the cornice under it are not. Replacing a cracked tile the month you find it is the difference between a small repair and a ceiling repair.

Replacing a tile is only half the job. The other half is putting in a tile that fits the roof and looks like it belongs.

Concrete tiles are the most common roof on Melbourne homes from the 1970s onwards. Manufacturers have made dozens of profiles over that time, each with its own shape, nib and lock, and a tile from a different profile will not seat properly against its neighbours no matter how close the colour is. We identify the profile from a sample or a close photo before we quote, then match the colour to the weathered roof, not to a new tile out of the box.

Terracotta tiles are fired clay, and on the older suburbs they can be seventy or a hundred years old and still sound. They crack, chip and occasionally shed their glaze, and the replacement needs to match the profile and the fired colour. A modern terracotta tile in the same profile is often a close match; where the original maker is long gone, we source second-hand tiles from the same era.

Slate is a different roof again. Each slate is nailed, not hooked, and the cracked piece is removed and replaced with a new slate secured with a hook or a clip, matched for thickness and colour so it sits flush with its row. It is careful, one-slate-at-a-time work, and we treat it that way.

The awkward truth of Melbourne tile roofs is that many of the profiles laid in the 1960s, 70s and 80s have been discontinued. When the last roofer looked at your roof and put silicone over the crack, this is usually why.

We go further. Salvage yards and tile recyclers across Melbourne hold stock of discontinued concrete and terracotta profiles, sorted by maker and shape, and sourcing from them is part of the job, not an extra. A profile that has been out of production for decades can often still be found second-hand.

When a tile genuinely cannot be found, there is a second option that keeps the roof looking right: we take a sound tile from a spot on the roof that is never seen from the street, such as behind a chimney or on the back plane above a lean-to, use it for the visible repair, and fit the closest available profile in the hidden spot where it is cut and dressed to sit properly. The street-facing roof stays uniform and the hidden swap is photographed so you know exactly where it is.

What we do not do is glue a crack, slide a piece of flashing under a broken tile as a permanent fix, or force a wrong profile into a row. All three leak again, and the second leak is usually worse because everyone has stopped looking.

A tile replacement is a good moment to look at everything that lives under and around the tiles, because the crew is already there and the lifted tiles give a clear view.

The sarking under the broken tile is checked for tears, sag and water staining, and where it has failed a new section is fitted under the surrounding tiles. The battens are checked for rot where water has been sitting. Along the edges of the repair we look at the valleys, the flashings at walls and penetrations, and the ridge and hip caps, which are the other places a tile roof lets water in. Metal work such as valleys and flashings is carried out by licensed roof plumbers, and anything that needs doing is shown to you in a photo and quoted separately, never added quietly to the job.

If the roof is mossy or covered in lichen, the crew will say so, because growth holds water against the tiles and hides the next crack. Cleaning is a separate service and our tile roof cleaning guide explains what it involves.

Tile replacement is a repair. It is not a restoration and not a re-roof, and where a roof has reached the point that a few new tiles will not hold it, we tell you that plainly and point you to the right service.