Write to the trough desk

Whatever you send from this page is read by people who spend their weeks walking rooflines, not scripts that sort tickets. A verdict in a survey report you want unpacked, a stain that reappeared after a repair someone else made, a sentence on this site you think is wrong: type it out and it will get a considered answer.

Details that sharpen the reply

• Roughly when the building went up. An 1890s cornice gutter and a 1970s parapet trough fail for different reasons, and the advice changes with the decade.
• How the roof is reached: an interior hatch, an outside ladder route, or nothing but a scaffold. Access shapes both the survey and the price.
• Whether the gutter hides behind a parapet wall or sits inside an overhanging eave. It tells us where the water goes when the trough gives up.
• Photos of the stained ceiling or wall, if you have them. A water mark is a map of the leak's route, and it often narrows the search before anyone climbs.

How quickly an answer comes

Most messages are answered inside one working day. After a week of heavy weather the queue grows, because surveyors are on roofs instead of at keyboards, but every message is read by a person and none are binned unanswered.

If what you really want is a price, skip this inbox: the survey form on the front page feeds the scheduling ledger directly and moves faster.

Your message stays inside the team handling it and your address is used for one thing: replying to you.