Decisions

Repair or replace: five questions, in order

This decision gets made badly in both directions. People replace roofs that needed a flashing repair, and people repair roofs that have been telling them for three years that they are finished. Five questions settle it, and they have to be asked in this order.

One: is the failure a component or the system?

A component failure is one thing that has broken while everything around it is sound: a split pipe boot, a length of step flashing, a nail pop, a section of ridge cap taken off in a gust. Those are repairs, and they are usually straightforward ones.

A system failure is the roof doing the same thing in many places at once. Sealant strips released across a slope, granule loss over the whole field, mat cracking, or fasteners that no longer hold anywhere because the deck is soft. Repairing one instance of a system failure buys a season.

Two: how much life is left in the rest of it?

Repairing a detail on a roof with fifteen years left is maintenance. Doing the same repair on a roof with two years left is spending money on something you will remove. The awkward middle is a roof with five to eight years left, and that is where the answer depends on what the repair costs relative to living with it, and on whether you intend to still be in the house.

How long a roof lasts sets the expectation. An inspection establishes where yours actually is, which is the part that matters.

Three: can it physically be repaired?

• Brittleness. Old shingles crack when they are lifted. On a roof past a certain point, a repair breaks more than it fixes, and any honest roofer will say so before starting.
• Availability. Discontinued profiles and colors cannot be matched. Sometimes an acceptable substitute exists; sometimes the only match is shingles pulled from a less visible slope.
• Access. A steep or high slope changes what a small repair involves, because the staging is most of the work regardless of how small the patch is.
• Layers. A repair on a roof with two or three layers has to deal with all of them, and the deck underneath has never been seen.

Four: is there water damage underneath?

A leak that has been running for a season is a roofing repair. A leak that has been running for years has usually taken the deck with it, and possibly the framing. Once the deck is compromised over an area, you are into removing roofing to get at it, and at that point the repair-versus-replace arithmetic changes completely because most of the labor is happening anyway.

Five: is there an event behind it?

If the damage came from a specific storm, the question is not only technical. Most Ohio and Kentucky policies require a loss to be reported within twelve months of the date it happened, and a repair done quietly today can make the extent of the original damage harder to establish later. Storm Check lists what NOAA recorded near your ZIP code with dates, and the insurance section explains how the process works.

When a repair is definitely the right answer

1. A single flashing detail on an otherwise sound roof. Chimneys, skylights and wall lines fail on their own schedule and always have.
2. Pipe boots. The rubber collar perishes long before the shingles do. Replacing boots on a fifteen-year-old roof is normal maintenance, not a stopgap.
3. Storm damage confined to one slope, where the rest of the roof is still sealed and in condition.
4. Ridge cap or a few courses lost in a gust, on a roof that is otherwise sound.
5. Anything that is letting water in right now, regardless of the long-term plan. Stop the water first, decide afterwards — that is what emergency tarping is for.

When repairing is throwing money away

• The roof has already been repaired two or three times in different places.
• The shingles are no longer bonded to each other across whole slopes.
• The mat is visible, cracking, or the shingles are curling at the corners across the field.
• The deck is soft in more than one place.
• You are repairing to sell, and the inspection report will list the same conditions anyway.