Any builder or serious DIYer will testify that property in southern Spain has very little in common with property in the UK and other northern European countries. The weather plays a large part in this, as the priority here in Spain relates largely to the sun and to heat, retaining heat in winter whilst keeping the fierce sun out in summer. In Britain the priority is to keep out the damp and keep in the heat. An old Spanish roof would not be suitable for the UK!
The roof on a typical ‘casa antigua’ (old house) is traditionally built in a construction and style going back many centuries. This is good and its bad! It’s bad in the sense that in serious storms, tiles may be dislodged, and the odd small leak may appear. The good news though, is that repairing the roof is usually an easy job and requires no roofing expertise (as long as you have a head for heights). It usually involves scrabbling around and rearranging the tiles with the only serious difficulty trying to avoid breaking other tiles whilst doing it! The alternative is to ask a local Spanish builder who will normally do the job for very little.
Traditionally the tiles were bedded down in mud which allowed some flexibility, so the tiles were less likely to crack. These days the hip tiles and the tiles on the front edge are normally concreted in place but generally the other tiles remain in situ by gravity! Old, replacement, tiles are easy to find (often selling on marketplace) and there are plenty of people prepared to clamber about on your roof for a few euros!
The key part of a roof in an old Spanish house is the beams. If the beams are solid and have no serious rot the worst that could happen is the roof tiles will need stripping off, the bamboo replaced, and the tiles re-laid. In the UK a new roof can be a very expensive job, here, not so much! If you are buying an ‘old cortijo’, check the beams for rot but don’t obsess too much if the roof tiles look a little wonky. This is normal. If you are worried, ask a qualified builder or architect.
Occasionally, you find the roof beams has been replaced by concrete. This will usually happen when the beams needed replacing, probably due to wood worm. The normal construction here will be block and beam which is concrete girders with blocks in between. The traditional tile can be reused so the exterior appearance is unaffected.
Costs
I am not going to get into detail about costs here, but I would like to relate a story to you. Some months ago, I was showing a client around an old ‘cortijo’ and although he was interested, he was obsessing about the roof at the front the house. It was sagging a little and the tiles were certainly in need of some attention. The Spanish owner shrugged his shoulder and repeatedly mumbled, “No es problema”.
Despite his assertions I was having problems convincing my English client. I eventually persuaded him to venture up into the loft and inspect the roof beams. They were sound and massive, and just a cursory glance told me they would outlast the three of us who were examining them, by quite some years!
Despite this my client decided it was a 10,000 € commitment to replace the roof, so he went searching elsewhere for his dream home. A few weeks later I returned to the ‘cortijo’ with another client and instantly noticed the roof had been replaced. I pointed at the new roof and smiled. The owner just grinned and just said, ‘no es problema’. I learnt later that he and his son had stripped off the tiles and re-laid them the previous weekend, starting Friday evening and finishing before lunch on Sunday.