Mount Riverview: ridge-top roofs with a long view east

Off the highway, up on the ridge

Mount Riverview sits at about 270 metres on a ridge north of the Great Western Highway, around 70 kilometres west of the Sydney CBD. It is a quiet residential suburb — a general store, a school, two churches, tennis courts, its own Rural Fire Service brigade — and on a clear day you can see the city towers more than fifty kilometres east.

That view is the clue to the roofing conditions. Houses up here are exposed. There is nothing between a ridge-top roof and the weather coming across the Cumberland Plain, and nothing between it and the westerlies either.

Call (02) 4703 5000 for a free inspection and a written quote.

Exposure, not altitude

At 270 metres the cold is not the problem. Wind is.

Wind finds whatever is already loose on a roof: ridge caps sitting on pointing that has gone powdery, old sheeting with tired fixings, barge boards, flashing edges and gutter brackets. A roof in good order rides it out; a roof that was already overdue loses something.

Driving rain is the companion problem. Water pushed sideways onto a chimney flashing, a wall abutment or a skylight upstand will find a crack that still water never would. If your ceiling only stains when the weather comes from one particular direction, that is the signature of a vertical junction failing rather than a hole in the field of the roof.

The common work

• Re-fixing and replacing wind-lifted sheeting, ridge and barge cappings
• Rebedding and repointing ridge lines before wind has anything to work on
• Flashing renewal at chimneys, wall junctions and penetrations
• Gutter and bracket replacement, sized for the actual catchment
• Gutter guard and roof-line detailing on blocks backing onto bushland

Bush on the boundaries

Most of this suburb sits close to national park and reserve bushland, so ember detailing and keeping gutters clear are part of ordinary roof maintenance here, not an extra. See gutter repair and replacement.

Nearby

Blaxland and Warrimoo are both close to the south, and Yellow Rock continues along the ridge country to the north. If wind has already taken something off, go to storm and emergency roof repairs. Complete list: service areas.