New build snagging survey in Barnstaple

Barnstaple is North Devon's principal town, sitting at the tidal limit of the Taw with steep wooded slopes rising north towards Exmoor. Its modern development is concentrated at Roundswell and Anchorwood, two identifiable growth areas beyond the large post-war estates and the Victorian terraces on the slopes at Newport and Sticklepath.

As the region's main commercial centre, Barnstaple's new build pace has been steady for some years, which means there is usually more than one live phase across Roundswell and Anchorwood at any given time, built by more than one developer.

Barnstaple is open to Atlantic weather coming up the Taw estuary from the west, with very little in the landscape to break it before it arrives. Rainfall is high and prolonged wetting, rather than short sharp downpours, is the main agent of decay on shaded roof slopes here.

Prolonged wetting is a slow but thorough tester of a roof detail. It does not need a storm to find a weakness, only time, which is exactly what a defects period provides before it runs out. A verge or flashing detail that has been under-sealed will generally show it here, given long enough, and the point of an early survey is not to wait and find out the hard way.

With more than one phase and more than one developer potentially active across Barnstaple's growth areas, a survey does not assume consistency between them. What is consistent is the town's exposure to sustained Atlantic rainfall, which is the standard every roof in Roundswell or Anchorwood has to be checked against regardless of who built it.

Barnstaple's postcode area runs EX31 to EX32. The Pannier Market, the Long Bridge over the Taw and the Tarka Trail mark the historic centre and riverside, useful landmarks for placing an address relative to Roundswell and Anchorwood, which sit on the town's outer edges rather than close to the water.

Bideford, Ilfracombe, Great Torrington and South Molton, all covered elsewhere on this site, sit further out across North Devon, and while all of them share a broadly Atlantic-facing exposure, Barnstaple's specific position at the tidal limit of the Taw estuary channels that weather in a way that is worth checking on its own page rather than assuming it matches its neighbours exactly.

Concrete interlocking tile alongside the town's more traditional clay plain tile both appear across Barnstaple's post-war estates and the newer development at Roundswell and Anchorwood, and given how sustained the local rainfall is, checking that both the tile and its underlay are doing their job matters as much as checking the tile alone.