Roof Repairs Southern Suburbs

Roofing in the Southern Suburbs

The Southern Suburbs stretch from the foothills at Mitcham through Edwardstown, Plympton and Marion to the 1980s and 90s estates at Morphett Vale and Happy Valley beyond the Southern Expressway. This is the home of the fifty-year-old concrete tile roof, with Housing Trust pockets, Westfield Marion and Flinders Medical Centre at its centre.

The southern suburbs were built in waves after the Second World War. Mitcham, Edwardstown and Plympton filled first with 1950s and 60s brick and brick veneer homes under terracotta or the concrete tiles that became standard across Adelaide from the 1960s, with Housing Trust pockets in Edwardstown and Marion where asbestos cement roofs still turn up on some untouched homes. Marion grew around Westfield Marion and Flinders Medical Centre through the 1960s and 70s, and the fringe beyond the Southern Expressway at Morphett Vale and Happy Valley came later, with 1980s and 90s estates under concrete tiles and, from the 2000s, Colorbond. The dominant repair here is the concrete tile roof at forty to sixty years old: surface erosion, porous tiles, moss and lichen, cracked ridge mortar and rusted valley irons. Reactive clay under most of the district moves the frame season to season, gutters lose their fall, and the winter fronts arriving from the south-west across Gulf St Vincent reach these suburbs early and hard.