Week Beginning 23.08.2026
There are weeks when the weather is just something you check before deciding which coat to wear.
Then there are weeks when it follows you around, stops you painting, exposes leaking roofs, floods your room at home and generally makes sure it gets a starring role in the story.
This was definitely the second kind.
The week started in the sunshine of Lloret de Mar, Spain, at the end of a family holiday. Seven days later, I’d covered a fair chunk of Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire, repaired a chimney on a Grade II listed building, worked through what felt like several months’ worth of rain, spent a day pretending to be a professional content creator, surveyed a collection of roofs I couldn’t actually get to, patched up one that was completely knackered and run a half marathon before breakfast.
Welcome back to Roof Tops and Pit Stops.
Sunday – From Lloret de Mar Back to the Motherland
Sunday 23rd August started in Lloret de Mar, where we’d spent the previous week on holiday as a family.
At 10am it was into the taxi and off to the airport, allowing plenty of time to check in for our flight back to Luton.
Remarkably, everything worked.
The airport wasn’t too busy, there were no significant delays, the flight was uneventful and we landed back at Luton without drama. We collected the van, loaded the luggage and eventually arrived home at around 5pm.
The biggest logistical challenge of the entire journey turned out to be finding somewhere to eat on a sunny Sunday afternoon.
Eventually we gave up, ordered an Indian takeaway and hunkered down at home, grateful to be back in the motherland.
Holiday over.
Monday – The Price You Pay for Going on Holiday
I’d deliberately left Monday free of booked work, which was one of my better decisions.
First came an early workout. After a week without any proper gym training, that was something of a shock to the system.
Then came the real punishment for taking a holiday: the phone.
From about 6:30am until 10am, I worked through WhatsApp messages, Facebook messages, emails and texts that had accumulated while I was away.
It appears one of the most effective ways of generating enquiries is simply to leave the country.
Once I’d finally caught up, I collected my truck and trailer from HTV Vehicle Solutions near Southwell. They’d spent the week being fully serviced and checked over, so both were ready for another spell of work.
From there I headed to Forest Town in Mansfield.
A roof I’d worked on before going away had leaked during a heavy rainstorm. I’d previously spent a day addressing as many potential water-entry points as possible, but something was clearly still getting through.
After another couple of hours investigating, my suspicion turned towards an old wooden clock tower built through the centre of the roof. It’s now in very poor condition and may have reached the point where further patch repairs around it aren’t going to solve the underlying problem.
That’s something I regularly encounter with roof repairs: finding where water appears inside a building doesn’t necessarily tell you where it’s getting through outside.
Sometimes the correct answer isn’t another tube of sealant. It’s recognising that a structure has deteriorated beyond sensible patch repair.
Back home by mid-afternoon, I hung up the harness and joined the family for the considerably less glamorous task of restocking the cupboards at Tesco.
Tuesday – A Grade II Listed Chimney in Swadlincote
Tuesday was the first day properly back in full swing.
I headed to Swadlincote to repoint and re-flaunch a small chimney on a Grade II listed property.
Older buildings need to be treated with some respect. Mortar isn’t simply mortar, and using an inappropriate modern mix on historic masonry can create more problems than it solves. Care was therefore taken to use suitable materials and mixes for the building.
The finished chimney came together nicely.
While I was there, I also repaired leaking guttering positioned above a glass conservatory and dealt with a failing verge end on a newer extension.
Ironically, the mortar on the relatively modern extension was in remarkably poor condition. It appeared there had been very little cement in the original mix.
So there I was carefully selecting the right mix for an old listed building while repairing prematurely failed mortar on the newer bit.
Age isn’t always the best indicator of quality.
For anyone dealing with deteriorating stacks, failed flaunching or masonry problems, I’ve got more information on my chimney maintenance and repair service.
It was a hard day’s work, but the sun was shining and it felt good to be properly back at it.
Wednesday and Thursday – Nottingham High School and the Return of the Rain
Wednesday took me to Nottingham High School, one of my regular customers.
They’ve recently had new grey windows fitted across the front of the building. They look fantastic – shiny, modern and very smart.
Unfortunately, making one part of a building look brand new has an annoying habit of making everything alongside it suddenly look considerably older.
In this case, the cast-iron downpipes were now looking decidedly shabby, so I’d been asked to repaint them.
I managed to get a first coat onto most of them before something happened that I hadn’t experienced for what felt like months.
It rained.
And that was merely the warm-up.
I returned on Thursday, this time to provide high-level access for the window installers. Two of the recently fitted windows were incorrect and needed replacing, so my job was to position the machine and give the fitters safe access.
The lads were excellent to work alongside, and one of the things I enjoy about cherry picker hire with an operator is that I regularly spend days alongside completely different trades.
You invariably learn something.
Unfortunately, from around 8am until I left at 4pm, it rained.
And rained.
And then rained some more.
The work was successfully completed, but by the time I got home I discovered the rain had created a problem much closer to home.
The garage adjoining our house isn’t really used as a garage. It’s my room, with my gym equipment, computer equipment, sofa, television and rugs.
And it was flooded.
After the recent heatwave the ground outside had become so hard that the enormous volume of water simply wasn’t getting away quickly enough.
Everything on the floor was drenched.
Thunder and lightning overnight then compounded the problem.
There’s a certain irony in spending your working week helping people solve problems with their buildings, only to arrive home and discover your own building has decided to join in.
A new floor and some substantially improved drainage now appear to be heading towards my own to-do list.
Friday – Apparently Content Creation Is Hard Work
Friday was a first for me.
I actually took a proper day away from normal paid roofing work specifically to create paid social-media content.
HighDrive from Heights for Hire had asked me to produce content around its self-hire truck-mounted cherry pickers – the machines you may have seen available from locations such as Tesco and B&Q car parks around the country.
I met Mark, who manages the HighDrive hire fleet, at Tesco Top Valley in Nottingham. He’d brought a brand-new truck mount and we spent the morning filming the handover process, looking around the machine and talking about how the whole self-hire concept works.
Hannah came along to help with filming while Granny Ralph looked after Robyn and Wren, which made capturing everything considerably easier.
After Mark left, Hannah and I did more filming around the car park before heading to Greggs in Bulwell.
HighDrive currently gives new customers a Greggs voucher as part of its promotion, so obviously it was essential that we investigated this thoroughly.
Purely professional research.
Once Hannah headed home, I took the machine back to Nottingham High School to demonstrate some genuine applications for it.
I continued painting the downpipes and cleared some high-level gutter hoppers, although by around 2pm the rain had once again stopped the painting.
My final stop was Bilsthorpe, where my friend Tomek had water coming into a rental property following Thursday night’s storms.
The professional technical assessment of this roof was fairly straightforward:
It was completely knackered.
There comes a point where describing something as a permanent repair would be misleading. I secured loose tiles and used OB1 hybrid polymer to seal obvious gaps and cracks, essentially buying the roof some time until Tomek decides to replace it properly.
By the time I finished, I was wet, cold and ready for home.
I’d started the morning thinking a day as a content creator might be easier than going roofing.
Apparently not.
Saturday – 21 Kilometres Before Breakfast
Saturday began at 4:30am.
I’m training for a half marathon in September and hadn’t done much serious training while away, so I wanted some proper kilometres back in my legs.
For reasons that presumably made sense at half past four in the morning, I decided to run a half marathon before breakfast.
No records were threatened. It was deliberately steady, but I completed the distance and felt considerably better for having done it.
After breakfast, it was time to attack the backlog of roof surveys.
First was Ilkeston for some troublesome chimneys, followed by a commercial building in Heanor.
Unfortunately, access at Heanor was so poor that I’ve decided the job isn’t suitable for me or my machinery.
Next came central Nottingham – and much the same conclusion.
No sensible parking, nowhere suitable to establish a cherry picker and no practical access to carry out the eventual repairs.
In hindsight, I should have studied the property more carefully on Google Earth beforehand. You never stop learning.
I didn’t even bother putting the drone up. There was little point identifying defects on a roof when I already knew I couldn’t physically get a machine into position to repair them.
I’ll refund the survey payment and recommend a roofer I know who can approach the work using scaffolding instead.
And that is an important part of surveying that can sometimes be overlooked.
Roof Access Is Part of the Diagnosis
A roof survey isn’t only about finding broken tiles, failed flashing or deteriorating mortar.
You also need to consider: how are you actually going to get there to repair it?
My spider cherry pickers solve access problems that would be extremely difficult with ladders or conventional access equipment. But they don’t make the impossible possible.
Ground conditions, gates, parking restrictions, overhead obstructions, machine setup areas and working outreach all matter.
Sometimes the correct professional decision is simply: this isn’t a cherry-picker job.
Identifying that before work begins can save the homeowner wasted time, unnecessary expense and a lot of frustration.
Saturday’s weather eventually became too drizzly for the more comprehensive drone survey I’d planned in West Bridgford, so that was postponed.
I did manage to assess a chimney removal in Cotgrave from ground level before heading to Farnsfield, where my mum had experienced overflowing gutters during the week’s rain.
Thankfully, she hadn’t flooded.
Unlike me.
Her problem was considerably easier to solve: blocked downpipes. A quick clearance restored the flow and demonstrated just how quickly a relatively minor blockage can become obvious during prolonged heavy rain.
More information about dealing with blocked gutters and downpipes can be found on my gutter clearance service.
Remarkably, despite touring a decent chunk of Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire, I was back around lunchtime.
That left time for another piece of HighDrive content – this time with Robin.
We loaded ourselves and a collection of GoPros into the truck mount and headed to Greggs armed with some of the promotional vouchers.
We bought ourselves a doughnut and filmed the whole expedition.
Hopefully there’s a decent short video in there somewhere.
Then came dinner and the start of a new project for Robyn and me: watching the Marvel films from the beginning.
We settled down with Iron Man.
Half marathon done. Surveys attempted. Chimneys inspected. Gutters unblocked. Doughnut secured.
Life is good.
Locations Worked This Week
- Forest Town, Mansfield – investigation of a persistent roof leak
- Swadlincote – listed-building chimney repointing and re-flaunching, gutter and verge repairs
- Nottingham – high-level painting, window access, gutter work and roof surveying
- Bulwell – HighDrive content filming
- Bilsthorpe – emergency temporary roof repair
- Ilkeston – chimney survey
- Heanor – commercial roof/access survey
- Cotgrave – chimney-removal assessment
- Farnsfield – blocked downpipe and gutter problem
- West Bridgford – roof survey postponed due to unsuitable drone weather
A Week Dominated by Water
Looking back, rain became the thread running through almost everything.
It revealed an ongoing leak in Mansfield, stopped the painting at Nottingham High School, produced an emergency roof repair in Bilsthorpe, caused gutters to overflow in Farnsfield and flooded my own room at home.
It also demonstrated why maintenance matters.
A blocked downpipe might sit unnoticed during dry weather. Deteriorated flashing might appear fine. A failing roof can limp along seemingly without issue.
Then you get several hours of proper British rain and the building tells you exactly where its weaknesses are.
Not necessarily convenient, but very informative.
At least we started the week in Spain.
Workwear This Week
As usual, much of the week was spent in workwear supplied by Granite Workwear. For anyone interested in the clothing and equipment I use on site, you can find them through my Granite Workwear link: https://www.graniteworkwear.com/?afid=danny
Do You Have Concerns About Your Roof, Chimney or a Persistent Leak?
If you’ve noticed a roof problem but aren’t sure what’s causing it, I offer two levels of roof inspection:
Targeted Roof Inspection — £100 + VAT
Designed to investigate a specific problem such as a persistent leak, chimney issue or isolated defect.
Full Roof Condition Survey — £250 + VAT
A more comprehensive assessment of the overall roof condition, particularly useful when you want a broader understanding of existing defects and maintenance requirements.
I generally carry out surveys within roughly 1.5 hours of North Nottinghamshire.
If you’re further afield, don’t automatically rule me out. Depending on the job, I can often assess photographs and access information remotely and provide quotations without making a separate survey journey.
More information is available on my roof survey and inspection service.
About the Author
Compiled and published by Danny Iwanejko – Dan the Cherry Picker Man.
Danny specialises in roofing, chimney repairs, roof inspections and difficult high-access work using specialist spider cherry pickers.
Roof Tops and Pit Stops documents the real working week behind the business – the successful jobs, awkward access problems, lessons learned, machinery, travelling and occasional things that don’t quite go according to plan.
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