If a roofer has quoted you for pointing, or a report has come back saying the pointing has failed, the obvious question is what is roof pointing in the first place, and what you are actually paying for. It is a small amount of material doing a large amount of work, and it is the part of a tiled roof that fails first.
What is roof pointing?
Ridge capping sits along the peaks and hips of a tiled roof, covering the join where two roof planes meet. Underneath each cap is a bed of mortar that holds the cap in place and seals the gap between it and the field tiles. That mortar is the pointing, and it is the only thing standing between wind driven rain and your roof cavity along the highest lines of the roof.
Because it sits at the top of the roof, it takes the worst of everything: the most UV, the strongest wind, and the widest daily temperature swing. It expands and contracts thousands of times, absorbs water in the rain and dries out in the sun, and micro-cracks widen from there. Moss and lichen grow into the cracks and push them further apart. The whole process takes years, which is exactly why nobody notices until a ceiling stains. The full picture of why ridge pointing fails is worth reading if you are trying to work out whether yours has gone.
Pointing or bedding: what is the difference?
These two get used interchangeably on quotes, and they are not the same job.
Bedding is the mortar bed the ridge cap actually sits on. Rebedding means lifting the caps off entirely, cleaning away all the old mortar, laying a fresh bed and resetting the caps in position. It is the bigger job, and it is what you need when the original bedding has broken down far enough that the caps have moved.
Pointing is the finishing step: a compound applied along the edges where the ridge cap meets the field tiles either side. Most jobs need both, with the caps rebedded in fresh mortar and then pointed with a flexible compound over the top. Done as a pair, that gives a ridge that holds for 15 to 25 years before it needs looking at again.
Worth knowing before you compare quotes: a ridge repoint on a standard Sydney home usually runs between $2,000 and $5,000, depending on how many metres of ridge you have and what condition the bedding underneath is in.
Flexible pointing or sand and cement mortar?
Sand and cement has been used for ridge pointing in Australia for decades and it does work. Its weakness is that it is rigid. It will not move with the thermal expansion of the tiles and caps underneath it, and that is what drives the cracking in the first place.
Flexible pointing compounds were built to solve exactly that. They stay slightly elastic after they cure, so they absorb the movement instead of fracturing under it. Most professional roofers in Sydney now use flexible pointing as standard, and if your ridge was done in sand and cement, which is likely on anything built before the 2000s, upgrading during the next repoint is the single best decision available on the job.
Which pointing compound, and what colours?
We carry the pointing range in roof pointing products, including flexible compounds, accelerant and the trowels to lay them.
Selleys Point Works
Selleys Point Works is a trowel-applied compound for fastening hip and ridge tiles. It flexes with normal roof movement without cracking or breaking away, and its non-slumping consistency makes it straightforward to mix and apply. It was the first pointing compound to qualify as an Adhesive Mechanical Fastener for hip and ridge tiles under AS2050-2018, and it has passed fatigue loading for Cyclonic Conditions C3 and C4 after prolonged water saturation under AS4046.8-2015. We stock the full colour range.
Ridgeflex
Ridgeflex flexible pointing is designed specifically for tile and terracotta roof constructions, and we stock it alongside the Selleys range.
Colour matters more than people expect here. Pointing runs the length of every ridge and hip on the roof, so a shade that is close but wrong reads from the street. Check the colour against your existing tiles in daylight before the job starts, not after.
One thing to be clear about: we supply the materials, your roofer does the install. Call (02) 9756 3350 to check what is in stock and get the colour right, or ask about pointing products through the contact form. We are at Prospect, Monday to Friday 6.30am to 4.00pm and Saturday 7am to 11am.
