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The damage people remember after a re-roof is often the crushed garden and the solar array that was lifted without a plan. Tiles and offcuts fall where gravity sends them. Panels come off before the strip and go back after the new roof can hold them. Roof Revival Melbourne writes the drop zone, the path, and the solar order into the job before the first tile moves.
A roof replacement dumps weight off the eaves. Old tiles are heavy, brittle, and indifferent to a camellia. New offcuts are smaller and just as willing to land in a pond. Protection is not a blue tarp thrown over a rose on the morning of the strip. It is a decision, made at the quote, about where material falls, where people walk, and which plants are moved rather than “minded”.
Solar is the other fragile system on the same roof. The panels are not a roofing accessory we unscrew for convenience. They are an electrical installation with a shutdown, a handling method, and a reinstall. We sequence that work with the electrician. We do not turn this page into wiring instructions.
Walk the ground with us. Mark the beds under the eaves, the glasshouse, the dog run, the fish pond, and the neighbour’s yard if the boundary is the gutter line. The strip should land in a zone you have agreed, with sheets or boards over the soil you care about, and with nothing stored in that zone on the day. A barbecue left under the eave becomes part of the demolition.
Some plants cannot be protected in place. A young tree hard against the wall, or a climber grown into the fascia, may need cutting back or a temporary shift. Tell us which plants are sentimental. We can often change the drop side. We cannot suspend a tonne of tiles above a prize rose and promise a soft landing. If you can move pots, move them the day before, not at smoko.
Paths matter as much as beds. A sideway of stepping stones will break under a barrow of tiles. We look for a route that prefers concrete, or we board it. Inner blocks with no side access push the cartage through the house or over the front garden. That choice belongs in the quote, because it changes both the garden plan and the hours. The replacement itself is roof replacement in Melbourne.
Shift pots, sculptures, and the kids’ bikes. Wind in the shade sail if it crosses the eave. Tell us about irrigation lines just under the mulch, because a staked board through a drip line is a stupid leak to create while we are fixing a different one. If a gardener is coming, book them before the strip or after handover, not in the middle of the bin week.
Pools and spas near the eave need a cover you trust, and a conversation about grit. Tile dust and metal swarf find water. A cheap leaf net is not a seal. If the pool is your concern, say so when we walk the ground, and we will treat that edge as a drop zone with rules, not as leftover space.
Panels come off before the roof comes off. They are stored where we have agreed, on edge, out of the drop zone, and not on the beds we are trying to save. They go back when the new roof is fixed and able to take the rails. Putting them back on a half-finished roof, or leaving them on while the sheets under them are replaced, is how arrays and roofs both get damaged.
The electrician does the shutdown and the reinstall. Book that trade as part of the same program, not as a surprise phone call on strip morning. If the array is old, the reinstall may not be a simple lift-and-replace. That is an electrical decision. We will not invent it, and we will not leave you with a roof finished and a pallet of panels nobody has dated. Write the two bookings on one page.
Rails, flashings, and the holes they leave are roofing issues. When the panels return, the penetrations have to suit the new roof, not the old hole pattern if the old pattern was the leak. That conversation happens before the strip, so the new roof is detailed for the array you are putting back. A roof designed as if the solar were gone, when the solar is coming back on Friday, is a roof with a second leak built in.
Walk the beds at the end, not only the ridge. Nails in the lawn are a defect of the site, not a gardening tip. We expect a magnet sweep where metal was cut, and a check of the boards before they come up. A cracked paver gets noted. A plant that was agreed to be at risk gets treated as a known cost, not a surprise complaint.
If a bed was used as the drop zone with your consent, it will look tired. That is different from a bed we said we would protect and then walked through. The quote is what we are measured against. Put the garden lines in it while the camellias are still upright.
Send suburb, storeys and two roof photos. Roof Revival Melbourne — 0426 516 883 · info@roofrevivalmelbourne.com.au
