What do I do about a slipped or missing roof tile?

One slipped tile is not an emergency for the building but it can be one for anyone underneath. The felt or underlay below usually keeps most of the water out for a while, which is why a missing tile can go unnoticed for months and then cause a sudden problem when the felt tears.

Safety

Step by step

1. Make the ground below safe.If a tile is hanging or loose above a path, a door, a drive or a boundary, cordon the area with tape and something physical. A falling tile is heavy and lands edge on.
2. Check the loft.Go up with a torch and look at the underside of the roof at the location. You are looking for daylight, wet felt, dripping water and any tear in the underlay. Put a container under any drip and check it regularly.
3. Photograph the roof from the ground.Binoculars or a zoom lens. Count tiles along and up from a fixed reference like a chimney or a valley so you can describe the location precisely to a roofer.
4. Look for the pattern.A single tile in the middle of a slope is usually a failed nail or a broken nib and is trivial to replace. Several tiles slipped in a line, or tiles slipping repeatedly, suggests the battens or the nails have failed across an area, which is a much bigger job.
5. Check for related damage.Slipped ridge tiles, a cracked chimney, lifted flashing, debris in the gutter, and any tiles now sitting on the ground. This information matters for the quote.
6. Protect the inside if water is coming in.Move belongings, put down sheeting and containers, and if water is tracking along a ceiling, a small drilled hole in a bulging ceiling to release it is safer than letting it collapse.
7. Get a roofer rather than improvising.Replacing a tile is genuinely quick for someone with a roof ladder. A temporary spray-on or tape repair applied by someone standing on the tiles risks breaking more of them and risks a fall.
8. Understand what the repair involves.The tiles above are lifted, the broken one removed, a new one hooked over the batten and, if it was nailed, secured with a tingle — a metal clip. It should take a competent roofer minutes once they are up there.
9. Ask about the underlay while they are up.If the felt below is torn or has perished, the tile repair does not stop the water. It is worth asking the roofer to check and report on it.

Tips

• Keep a few spare tiles if you ever have roof work done. Matching a discontinued tile years later is the hard part of a small repair.
• After a storm, walk the perimeter of the house and look for tile fragments on the ground. They are the first sign of damage you cannot see.
• Storm damage to a roof is usually covered by buildings insurance. Photograph everything before any repair, including the debris.

Common mistakes

• Climbing onto the roof to replace one tile — Roof slopes are slippery, tiles crack under foot load, and there is no edge protection. It is the classic one-job-that-looked-quick fall, and the injuries are severe.
• Ignoring a missing tile because nothing is dripping — The underlay is taking the water. Once it perishes or tears, water comes in properly, and by then the battens and rafters have often been wet for a long time.

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