Hello stw builders (be you professionally or google qualified!)

Went to look at a house today, poked my head in the loft and noticed the ridge beam (ridge plate?) was not continuous along the length of the house. At 3 points the beam between the joists was missing, so in essence the roof was in four sections, held together only by the tile battons (that i could see).

Looking from outside it appears other houses in the street have vented ridge tiles and some repaired/replaced ridge tiles are visible on this roof.

At the locations where the ridge beam was missing the felt was also torn so the underside of the ridge tiles were visable. This is obviously an issue but how could you fix it, remove the tiles seems like the only option.

So my questions are;

Would the vented ridge tiles have been the reason for missing ridge beam sections?
Does this sound right (possibly poorly supported roof trusses)?
Would a survey identify the beam to be “repaired” despite it probably being built like that?

Cheers all, plan on getting someone to look at it before put an offer in but appreciate any sage advise.
Rich.

you mention trusses, is the roof a truss construction or tradition cut and pitch ?

Truss roofs have no ridge board to mention , instead have 100×25 lateral braces fixed to the underside of the trusses at various points through out the roof. Standard practice would to fit a lateral brace on the underside a the peak(ridge). If its this that has been cut out then it should be replaced as close as possible with another 100×25 overlapping at least 2 trusses either side of the missing pieces. this is fairly easy to sort out if you can get to it.
If its a tradition structure again not a huge problem as the either side of the roof in effect push against each other. The above solution can be reapplied to correct if necessary.

It was a bit of a restricted viewing (and my experience in this area fairly limited) but dont think there were any lateral braces to see, will certainly look for that when i go back, thanks. I anticipated it might be a simple fix but you hear all these horror stories about surveyors 😆

bump for monday crowd (and just realised i cant spell buiLders, doh!)