The Concrete House in Lewes is one of the most talked-about builds Grand Designs has ever filmed. Megan and Adrian Corrigall’s brutalist monolith divided viewers when the episode first aired in 2018, and by the time Kevin McCloud came back to see it finished, most of them had changed their minds. We installed the flat roof.
A house like this gives a roofer nowhere to hide. Exposed concrete inside and out, no plaster, no ceilings, no voids. On a conventional house a flat roof that lets water in gives you a stained ceiling and a phone call. Here the structure is the finish. It has to be right the first time.
We built it as a warm roof on cut-to-falls insulation. A concrete slab is poured flat, so there is no natural gradient to drain it, and the fall has to be created inside the roof build-up itself: tapered boards, set out to a drainage design, so water runs where it is meant to instead of standing in the middle. The insulation does two jobs at once, forming the falls and sitting above the deck to keep the whole structure on the warm side of the dew point.
A 3-layer built-up felt system finished it. On a roof this size, felt earns its place. It can be dressed into every upstand, junction and awkward detail an architect like this comes up with, and it has decades of proven performance behind it in this climate.
The Concrete House has a flat roof that drains properly, insulates properly, and draws no attention to itself. On a building like this one, that last part is the whole job.
We work on everything from garage roofs to architect-designed new builds. See our full range of flat roofing services in Lewes.
If your flat roof is leaking, ageing, or due an upgrade, we can help with clear advice and a watertight result.
