Roof repair
Most roof leaks are not holes in the roof
A leak is a symptom. The repair that lasts is the one that finds the defect, and the defect is almost always a detail rather than the field of the roof.
Where residential leaks actually come from
Sorted roughly by how often they turn up on a house in this market:
- Pipe boots. The rubber collar around a plumbing vent hardens in sunlight and splits. It fails years before the shingles do, and water runs straight down the stack into the wall or ceiling.
- Step flashing at a wall or chimney. Particularly where somebody has replaced proper step flashing with a continuous strip of metal and a bead of sealant.
- Valleys. Nails driven too close to the center line, or debris damming up and holding water against the shingle edge.
- Counterflashing at masonry. Surface-mounted and sealed instead of let into a cut reglet. The sealant shrinks, and then the chimney wets from the inside.
- Nail pops. A fastener backing out lifts the shingle above it and leaves a hole under it.
- Ice dams. Not a defect in the roof at all, but a heat-loss and ventilation problem that the roof gets blamed for.
Each of these is a component in the roof anatomy drawing, with what it is, how it fails, and what happens if it is left.
How a leak gets traced
Start inside
The attic tells you more than the roof does. Daylight, staining on the underside of the deck, rusted nail tips and wet insulation all point uphill to where water is actually getting in.
Follow the water up
Water runs down rafters and along the deck before it drops. The entry point is uphill of the stain, sometimes well uphill.
Inspect the suspect detail from above
Once the attic narrows it down to a penetration, a wall line or a valley, the detail gets looked at directly and photographed.
Repair the detail, not the drywall
A repair that replaces a boot, rebuilds a flashing or reworks a valley fixes the cause. Sealant over the top of a defect buys a season.
When a repair is the wrong answer
Repair is the right call when the rest of the roof has real life left and the defect is local. It stops being the right call when:
- the same roof has needed three or four separate repairs in a couple of years, which usually means the failures are age-related rather than incidental;
- the shingles are brittle enough that lifting one to work under it breaks it, which makes any repair destructive;
- the decking is soft around the repair area, because there is nothing sound to fasten to;
- granule loss is widespread and the mat is visible in the field, which means the surface has already lost its protection.
A good repair conversation ends with a straight answer about how much roof is left, not just a fixed leak. If the honest answer is that this is the third repair on a twenty-two year old roof, you should hear that.
Emergency and after-hours
Active water coming into a room is a different situation from a stain you noticed last week. If water is coming in now, the first job is to stop it getting worse — see emergency tarping — and the diagnosis follows once the weather allows a proper look.
Have a stain on a ceiling and no idea what is behind it?
Request a free inspectionCan you match my existing shingles?
Usually closely, rarely exactly. Shingles weather, and a color that matched on the day it was made will not match a roof that has had ten summers on it. On a visible slope that matters, and it is worth talking about before the repair rather than after.
Why does my roof only leak in winter?
That is the classic signature of an ice dam or of attic condensation. Melt water from a warm attic refreezes at the cold eave, backs up under the shingles, and gets in. It is fixed with air sealing, insulation and ventilation, plus ice and water shield at the eave — not with more sealant on the roof.
My roof leaks in heavy rain but not light rain. What does that mean?
It usually points to a defect that only matters when water volume is high: a valley, a blocked gutter overflowing back under the drip edge, or a wall flashing that can cope with a trickle but not a sheet.
Will a repair affect my warranty?
A manufacturer material warranty covers the material. Workmanship on a repair is a separate thing. If the roof is still inside somebody else's workmanship warranty, that is worth checking before anybody else works on it.
All work is performed by licensed and insured local roofing professionals.