Roof Repair

Where Leaks Start

Water does not fall straight down once it is inside your roof. It runs along the underside of the decking, follows a rafter, and shows up on your ceiling several feet from where it got in. Finding the real entry point is most of the work.

• Cracked plumbing vent pipe boots. The most common source we find, and one of the cheapest to fix.
• Failed wall and chimney flashing. Sealant-only details fail. Properly integrated step and counter flashing does not.
• Wind creased shingles, which look intact and have lost their seal at the fold.
• Exposed fasteners backed out by heat cycling.
• Valley failures, where the most concentrated water flow is.
• Low slope transitions, where shingles are used below their minimum slope.

How We Find It

We start inside with moisture readings, then go into the attic to read staining and daylight on the deck underside, then get on the roof above and uphill of that evidence. If it is not conclusive we water test in sections from the bottom up. A guessed repair means you pay twice, so we would rather spend the time.

The Interior Is Part Of The Job

By the time a stain shows, water has usually been in the assembly a while. Wet blown-in insulation stays wet and holds against the drywall long after the roof is fixed. We remove it, cut drywall back to dry framing, confirm dry with readings, then rebuild, texture and paint the full plane so the repair does not telegraph.

Water and leak damage repair

What August Does To The Small Parts

Stand on a dark shingle roof in DFW in late July and the surface temperature is well past anything you would guess from the air temperature. That deck heats all afternoon, then gives the heat back after sundown, and it does that every day for months. Rubber and plastic components lose their plasticizers under that cycle. The neoprene washer on an exposed fastener hardens. Sealant in a pitch pocket shrinks away from the pipe. Pipe boot collars go chalky and split at the top where the sun hits them hardest.

So the parts that fail first on a DFW house are almost never shingles. They are the small accessories nobody prices out. When we are up there for a leak we check every boot, every exposed screw and every sealed joint on the roof, since the one that leaked today has forty neighbors the same age.