English-speaking owners
An English-speaking roofer in the Aude
Roofing work is difficult to judge in your own language. In somebody else’s, with words that have no English equivalent, on a house you may only see a few weeks a year, it becomes something else entirely.
This page is not about roofing — the six service pages cover that. It is about everything that sits around it: reading a “devis”, describing a problem when you do not know the word for it, and knowing what is happening to a house you are not standing in front of.
MBS Roofing Work South France works across the Minervois and the Haute-Vallée de l’Aude, on tiled roofs, in French and in English. This page exists because those three things together are the actual reason people write to us in English.
If you are searching for a roofing contractor in the Aude rather than a “couvreur”, this is the same trade under its English name — a one-man craft business, working directly, with no agency in between.
The ground
What usually goes wrong
Three situations that come up constantly, and none of which is really about the roof.
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You cannot describe the problem
A damp patch on a ceiling is easy to point at and almost impossible to name. You do not need the French words: describe where the mark is, when it appears, and whether it grows while it rains or afterwards. That is already half the diagnosis, and it works perfectly well in English.
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The quotation is in French, and it is technical
A French “devis” for roofing is a list of trade terms. “Réfection” and “réparation” look similar and mean entirely different amounts of work. “Solin”, “closoir” and “faîtage” have no everyday English equivalent. The glossary below covers the ones that matter, and every service page on this site explains its own.
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The house is empty for most of the year
A roof gives signals for months before it fails — a green north slope, a gutter that has started to overflow, a ridge tile out of line. Every one of those needs somebody standing in the garden. That is the single biggest difference between a second home and a house that is lived in.
Vocabulary
The words that will be on your quotation
Not a full dictionary — the dozen terms that actually decide what a French roofing quotation means.
- Réfection Re-roofing
- The covering comes off and goes back, with the deck and underlay dealt with in between. A major job.
- Réparation Repair
- Something localised, put right where it is. Days rather than weeks, and a completely different budget.
- Couverture The covering
- The tiles themselves and everything holding them — as distinct from the “charpente”, the structure underneath.
- Charpente Roof structure
- The timber frame: rafters, purlins, ties. If this is in the quotation, the job is a structural one.
- Voligeage Boarding / deck
- The boards laid over the rafters that the tiles sit on. On older roofs, often the thing that has actually failed.
- Écran de sous-toiture Underlay
- A membrane laid over the deck, under the battens — a second line of defence. Many older French roofs have none.
- Liteau / liteaunage Batten / battening
- The horizontal timbers the tiles hook onto, set out at the tile gauge.
- Faîtage Ridge
- The line where two slopes meet, and the ridge tiles closing it. “Scellé” means mortar-bedded, “à sec” means dry-fixed.
- Closoir Ridge closure
- The ventilated strip that seals a dry-fixed ridge instead of mortar.
- Rive Verge
- The side edge of the roof, over a gable. The first thing the wind attacks.
- Solin Flashing
- The weatherproof join where the covering meets masonry — a chimney, a party wall. The commonest source of leaks.
- Noue Valley
- Where two slopes meet in an internal angle. Everything from both slopes passes through it.
- Chéneau Box gutter
- A gutter built into the structure rather than hung on brackets. Discreet, and treacherous when it blocks.
- Tuile canal Canal tile
- The half-round clay tile of the Mediterranean south, laid in pairs — “courant” below, “couvert” over.
- Tuile gélive Frost-damaged tile
- A tile that has absorbed water and been broken up by frost. It flakes and sounds hollow.
- Échafaudage Scaffolding
- Required for most re-roofing. Erecting it is part of the job and part of the price.
The paperwork
How a French quotation works
A “devis” is a written, itemised offer. It is not an estimate: once you sign it — “bon pour accord”, with the date — it becomes the contract, and the figures on it are the figures.
It should name the work item by item rather than give a single lump sum, state the surface area concerned, and separate the covering from the structure and from the scaffolding. If those three are merged into one line, ask for them apart: they are the three things that move independently.
And read the vocabulary. The difference between “réfection” and “réparation” on the first line changes everything that follows it.
Services
What we do on a roof
Six kinds of work, each with a full page — and each explaining its own French vocabulary as it goes.
Questions we are asked in English
Do I have to speak French to get work done on my roof?
Not with us. Write or call in English and describe what you can see. The technical terms are our job, not yours — though this page gives you the ones that will appear on the paperwork, because reading your own quotation is worth something.
Can you look at the roof while I am not in France?
The roof does not need you present, and neither does the scaffold. What matters is what happens afterwards: that somebody tells you what was found, in English, with photographs, rather than simply telling you it is done.
I have just bought a house here. What should I check first?
The ridge, the verges and the flashing round any chimney — those are the details that fail first on a tiled roof — and whether there is an underlay at all. Many older French roofs have none, which is not a fault in itself but changes what a bad spell of weather does.
Is French roofing different from what I am used to?
The principle is the same; the materials and the details are not. Canal tiles are laid in pairs and rely on lap rather than on interlock. Ridges are traditionally bedded in mortar rather than dry-fixed. And a great many roofs here were built with no underlay, which is the single biggest difference in practice.
Where exactly do you work?
Across four areas: the Haute-Vallée de l’Aude, the Minervois and Alaric, the Corbières, and the Montagne Noire and Cabardès — twenty-four villages and towns in all, three of them just over the border in the Hérault. The full list is on the areas page.
Write in English
Tell us what you can see and roughly where the house is. If it is within our area we will say so straight away — and if it is not, we will say that too.