Moorooka is one of the suburbs we work in most. Behind the Beaudesert Road strip it is street after street of post-war timber and tile, plus a good number of houses that are genuinely a century old — and those two things need completely different handling.
One half of the suburb is post-war: low-set brick and timber homes on flat-ish blocks with concrete tile roofs. Those tile roofs are the bread and butter of what we do here. Brisbane sun eats the surface coating off a concrete tile in about twenty years, and once that goes, moss and lichen have something to grip. From the street it reads as a stained roof. From above it is usually much worse than the owner thinks.
The other half is the old stuff — Queenslanders and workers’ cottages that have been here a hundred years. These need a lighter touch everywhere. Soft washing rather than pressure on painted weatherboard, and real care around anything painted before 1970, because that paint is very likely lead-based and cannot simply be blasted off into the garden.
One specific Moorooka thing worth knowing: the timber casement windows on the older homes leak. Not dramatically, but enough that a careless window or house wash puts water inside. We work around them rather than through them, and we will tell you if a window is in bad enough shape that we would rather not wet it at all.
The suburb also climbs toward Toohey Forest at the southern end. More trees means more leaf litter in the gutters and more shade on the south side of the house, which is where the mould always starts.
This roof looked tired from the footpath. From forty feet up it was almost entirely covered.
Also working nearby: Annerley, Tarragindi, Mount Gravatt and Sunnybank.
