Roofers in Finglas

Finglas housing: from the village to the estates

Finglas grew from a small village into one of the city's biggest suburbs in the decades after the war. Dublin Corporation began building large estates of terraced and semi-detached houses in the 1950s, and most of Finglas was built out through the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, with private estates alongside the Corporation housing.

Most of those houses have simple pitched roofs of concrete interlocking tiles, a chimney on the party wall, and a flat-roofed porch, garage or rear extension added by an owner along the way. Finglas village itself has older houses, cottages and shops with slate roofs that were there long before the estates.

Finglas is in Dublin City Council's area, while neighbouring Dublin 15 comes under Fingal County Council, which matters if you are planning a dormer or a change of roof covering.

Concrete tile roofs at the end of their first life

Concrete tiles weather slowly. Their surface wears away, they hold more water, moss takes hold on the north-facing slopes, and in a hard frost the wettest tiles crack. The ridge and hip tiles sit on mortar that has had decades of rain washing through it, and once it breaks up they rock loose in the wind. Underneath, the original bitumen felt on many of these houses has gone brittle, and where it has split at the eaves, water that gets past a cracked tile runs into the fascia and the top of the wall.

That is why the repair or replace question comes up so often in Finglas. A roof with a few cracked tiles and a loose ridge on sound felt is a straightforward roof repair. A roof where the tiles are porous on every slope and the felt has perished has lost its second line of defence, and the repairs start coming round every winter. We will tell you plainly which one you have, and our guide on how long a roof lasts in Ireland explains what to expect from each covering.

Porches, garages and the roofline

Flat roofs are the other constant in Finglas. Front porches, converted garages and kitchen extensions were often covered with a single layer of felt, and many are now on their second or third covering. A split, a blister or a failed upstand where the roof meets the house can be patched if the deck is dry, while a soft, spongy deck means the boards underneath need replacing. Our flat roof repairs page explains both.

The original timber fascias and soffits on these estates have usually been painted many times, and the wood behind the paint is often soft at the joints. Replacing them with uPVC fascia and soffits, and fitting new gutters on the same visit, ends the repainting and gives the gutters something solid to fix to.

Roofing work across Dublin 11

We cover all of Finglas, east, west and south, along with the village, Ballymun and the rest of Dublin 11, for homeowners, landlords and businesses. Our 24/7 emergency call-out line on 085 172 1435 deals with tiles lifted or ridges loosened by a storm, and we clear gutters and downpipes of the moss that washes off concrete tile roofs and blocks the outlets.

Near Finglas

Finglas is just north of our base in Cabra, with Glasnevin to the east and the estates of Dublin 15 to the west. Our roofers in North Dublin page covers the whole north side, and the areas we serve page shows the rest of our area.

More answers on our roofing FAQs page.

Related

• Roofers in North Dublin
• Roofers in Cabra and Dublin 7
• Roofers in Dublin 15
• Roof repairs
• Flat roofs
• Fascia and soffits