How much does it cost to fix a roof in the Algarve?

There is no single figure for fixing a roof, because roof repair is priced on what is under the tiles and on how someone gets up there, not on the number of tiles that have moved. As of 2026, a repair in the Algarve is quoted from photos as a written price for the job and confirmed once someone is on the roof, and re-tiling a slope or a whole roof is quoted per square metre.

How is a roof repair quoted?

Two ways, and it matters which one you are being given.

• A repair is quoted as a job. Someone looks at the roof from the ground and the top, opens a section if needed, and writes a price for that repair: access, time on the roof, materials, and a stated rate for anything found underneath. That written condition is the honest way to price a roof nobody has yet opened.
• Re-tiling is quoted per square metre. When a slope or the whole roof comes off, the price is a rate per square metre times the area, with access and disposal as separate lines. The rate changes with what goes back: old tiles relaid, new tiles, new battens, an underlay the roof never had.

What moves the price of a roof repair?

What changes	Which way it moves the price
Tile type	Lusa relays fast; loose-laid canudo is slower and heavier; old marseille profiles are hard to match
Access and pitch	Ladder, tower or platform; above a certain pitch, fall protection is a requirement
Battens and underlay	Sound support is a tile swap; rotten battens or torn underlay make it carpentry first
Flashings	Chimneys, wall abutments and roof lights are where most leaks start and where the slow work is
Scaffolding or a lift	Erection, days of hire, and any permission to occupy the street
Gutters	By the metre run and the same access; cheap to add once someone is up there
Season	Autumn crowds the diary; a dry spring window is calmer

The tile sets the method. Telha lusa, the S-shaped interlocking tile on most roofs here, is stocked everywhere and relays quickly. Telha de canudo, the traditional half-round canal tile, is laid loose in channel and cover courses with mortar only at the edges and ridges: slow to relay, heavy, and weathered to a colour no new tile has. Telha marselha, the flat interlocking tile, is quick to work, but some older profiles are no longer made and replacements can mean a hunt for reclaimed stock.

What is underneath decides the size of the job. Tiles sit on battens (ripas), with an underlay or subtelha beneath them on newer roofs and nothing at all on many older ones, so a tile that has leaked for two winters has been wetting timber directly. Whether the battens are sound, soft or gone turns a morning’s tile swap into a two day repair, and it is found on the roof, not from the garden.

The junctions are where the money goes. Most leaks are at the chimney (chaminé), a wall abutment or a roof light, and renewing the metal or membrane flashing (rufo) there is slower, more skilled work than swapping tiles a metre away.

Repair or re-roof: which one are you being quoted for?

A repair is right when the support is sound and the failure is local: a few slipped tiles, a metre of ridge mortar, one flashing. Re-tiling a slope is the better spend when the tiles are brittle with age, the bedding has let go along the whole ridge, the underlay is gone across the slope, or the same area has been patched twice, because each return visit brings the access cost back with it. The decision is worked through in can you repair just part of a roof.

Does the time of year change the price?

It changes availability more than the rate. Faro’s climate normal puts 221.5 mm of its 455.1 mm annual rain into October, November and December, 48.7 per cent of the year in one quarter, while June, July and August carry 9.0 mm between them. Source: IPMA, Normais Climatológicas 1991-2020, Faro airport station (2024 edition).

So the roof goes from a near-dry summer straight into the wettest quarter, and the first storm sends everyone to the phone in the same week. A repair booked in May is done in a dry window; one found in November waits for the rain to pause and often needs a temporary cover first, a second visit on the bill.

What should a written roof repair quote itemise?

Enough that you can see which part is access and which part is roof:

1. Access: ladder, tower, platform or scaffold, and the days on site.
2. The repair: tiles replaced or relaid, new or reclaimed; ridge and verge mortar by the metre; flashings by the junction.
3. A provisional rate for battens, underlay or timber found rotten once the tiles are up, so a discovery changes the bill by an agreed amount.
4. Gutters and downpipes, if cleared or refixed on the same visit.
5. Stripping and disposal, on any re-tiling, including the skip.
6. Exclusions: usually the ceiling inside, which is plastering.
7. IVA, included or not, and a guarantee in writing.

Why is there no figure on this page?

Because the per square metre prices that circulate are for full replacements, mostly from other regions, and applied to a length of ridge mortar on a house in Tavira they give a number that decides nothing. A figure that fits the ladder job is wrong for the platform job. The page on roof repair in the Algarve explains what the visit includes and how to send the photos that get a real price.

What to send, and what to ask

Send photos of the stain inside and of the whole roof from the ground, say how many storeys the house has, and note whether the leak comes with any rain or only with wind driven rain. Then ask:

• Where does the water get in, and how do you know? Water travels along battens and drops metres from where it enters, and a repair placed under the stain lasts until the next storm.
• Is the access priced separately, and for how many days?
• What happens if the battens are rotten, and is that rate in the quote?
• Are the replacement tiles new or reclaimed, and where will any mismatch go?
• Will you photograph the roof before and after?

The first question separates a good quote from a cheap one.