DIY replacing flat roof.

[kindai]

Ok either I am

a) Insane

or

b) Insane

but I am currently looking at a horrendous bungalow thats up for sale with a flat roof.

As they say a picture speaks a thousand words...

The price matches the condition. The entire roof is f-ed to put it lightly. The interior walls are all plasterboard and the water has gotten in and long story short the whole place will need gutting.

Now rebuilding internal stud walls is easy enough, the question comes to the roofing.

As far as I can tell, for the most part the construction itself for the roof is nothing more than glorified decking with a few bonus features to add (a slight angle to allow water to run off, air gap, insulation etc). But the quotes to replace a full roof seem entirely disproportionate to what I consider the actual work to be given the basic materials.

So this leads me to the question, is this actually something that is in the realms of DIY? Or is it just not worth considering?

 

[kindai]

Is the entire roof flat? Are you re-engineering it? It's a tough one to answer as flat roofs are relatively child's play with modern EPDM sheets. But depends if it's being married to a pitched roof etc .

Yup, wall to wall entirely flat.

 

[kindai]

i'm guessing he wants to do it on the cheap as he won't be living there and renting it out so wants maximum return on investment.

so he doesn't care what is better but what will work and is cheapest.

Correct. Inside it needs entirely ripping out. So when it is back to a shell it will quite literally be 4 walls (well, 6 as its a strange layout) with utility supplies, no roof and no internal structures.

I have access to trade accounts for the materials and am pretty good at DIY in general. Would likely go for a warm flat roof option. Pitched would be nice but prohibitively expensive given the layout of the walls. But given it would effectively be starting from scratch, nothing to get in the way, once the main joists are in would be able to fly along. I would get a pro in to do the final seal but the rest seems easy and cheap enough.

 

[kindai]

if you had the cash i'd be tempted to knock the full thing down and rebuild from scratch and get 2-3 townhouses on the land. much more capital needed up front but much bigger returns to be had.

Yea, nowhere near that much money lying around unfortunately

as it's structural you won't really know about load bearing, etc i'd get a pro in to do it but I can see why you want to try and do it on the cheap and just wanted to make it clear to others as you don't care about what is best but what is cheapest and will work long term. otherwise you will just get contact replies saying do it properly.

I have a couple of mates who are builders who are going to price me up, on the flip side theyve both offered to help out as I've sorted them out in the past when theyve needed a hand with some things.

The project while "big" is not difficult, in fact, in my mind at least because it would be gutted with only the utility points left, once the roof is watertight the inside should fly up because we can route pipework and electrics efficiently as possible.

 

[kindai]

As an update, went to the auction to buy this property, had a number in my head. In the end it went for 3.5 times what I was willing to pay.