Roofing and re-roofing on the Côte d'Azur

Most older houses here carry tuiles canal: curved terracotta barrel tiles laid in overlapping rows on a low-pitched roof. The style suits hot, dry summers and mild winters, and you'll see it from Menton to Cannes. Newer houses sometimes use flatter interlocking tiles. On anything built before the 1980s, canal tiles still dominate, and historic centres often require them whatever you'd prefer.

What you can see from the ground is slipped or cracked tiles. They usually follow the violent storms of September and October, or a winter gale. Act quickly on a row sitting out of line or a gap where a tile has gone. A single missing tile lets water into the structure far faster than the gap suggests.

What you can't see is the underlay beneath the tiles, their backup barrier. Decades of sun and heat wear it out until it stops working. Zinc gutters and the flashings round chimneys and valleys corrode, or were too small to begin with. That's where most "roof leaks" start, more often than in the tiles. The mortar sealing the ridge tiles also cracks and crumbles, and it's easy to miss unless someone climbs up.

A proper inspection checks all four, not just the tiles seen from a ladder. If all you've been told is "it's leaking somewhere," ask for a proper look before anyone commits to a repair plan.

The timber under the tiles matters most, and nobody knows its state until the tiles come off. Rotten rafters or battens have to be replaced before anything goes back on. Ask each roofer how they'll price timber found rotten during the strip, so a surprise doesn't leave the price open-ended.

Reusing the old canal tiles can save buying new ones, but some break as they come off, and the replacements have to match. Access is the next factor. A steep pitch or a narrow street makes scaffolding harder to put up. Valleys, dormers and chimneys add flashing work, and sarking adds its own line.

In a house permitted before July 1997, fibre-cement sheets, gutters or flues may contain asbestos. They need checking before anyone cuts or removes them, and removal if the check finds any.

Get at least two written quotes for the same scope, each priced line by line: scaffolding, timber, tiles, insulation if any.

Stripping an old roof and re-laying the tiles counts as general renovation work, taxed at 10% TVA. That's the rate on a full réfection with no insulation, and the one most roofing devis (written quote) will show.

The 5.5% rate covers only the insulation part of a job: the panels, the membrane and the labour to fit them. Stripping and re-laying the tiles stays at 10%, even alongside sarking, unless it's indispensable to the insulation work.

So a combined réfection and sarking job needs at least two lines on the devis: insulation at 5.5%, roofing at 10%. If your devis shows one 10% line for a job that includes insulation, ask the roofer to split it. Otherwise you pay 10% on the insulation instead of 5.5%.

Don't measure that saving against 20%. Renovation on a home over two years old was never going to be taxed at 20%; the fallback is 10%. The real saving is smaller than many French sites suggest when they compare against the wrong rate.