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Water does not leak straight down, so the wet spot on your ceiling is rarely under the hole. Finding where the water actually gets in is most of a repair. We diagnose and repair leaks, storm-damaged shingles and failed flashing across the 252, starting with a free inspection.
How a repair works
A ceiling stain marks the place water finally gave up, not the place it got in. Water lands on the deck, runs down the underside of the sheathing, tracks along a rafter until something interrupts it, and comes through the drywall somewhere else entirely. On a low-slope roof it can travel a long way. Repairing the spot under the stain is the most common way a roof gets “fixed” twice.
So a repair starts with a diagnosis, and the diagnosis usually needs both sides: the roof, where the entry point is, and the attic, where the path is. Daylight through the deck, a clean run of staining down one rafter, a wet patch of insulation that does not line up with the ceiling below it. Those three things tell you more in five minutes than an hour of walking the field.
Flashing. Where the roof meets something that is not roof: a chimney, a wall, a dormer, a valley. This is where most roofs leak, and it is almost never the shingles’ fault.
Pipe boots and vent collars. The rubber collar around a plumbing vent perishes and splits in well under the life of the shingles around it. It is one of the least expensive components on a roof and one of the most frequent causes of an interior leak.
Wind-damaged shingles. Creased tabs, lifted courses, and shingles that have lost their seal strip. A creased shingle often looks intact from the ground and is already broken through the mat.
Valleys. Where two planes dump their water into one channel. Volume plus debris plus a tired membrane is a predictable leak.
Ridge and hip. Cap shingles and ridge vent, which take the wind first and often fail before the field.
Localized decking. If the sheathing under a long-running leak has gone soft, we cut it out and put new wood in. A fastener driven into rotten plywood has nothing to hold on to.
A repair is the right answer when the roof around the problem still has service life in it: the field holds its granules, the mat is not exposed, and the failure is local. A pipe boot on a nine-year-old roof is a repair, full stop.
It is the wrong answer when the roof is worn out everywhere and the leak is simply the first place it showed. At that point a repair buys a few months and the next leak arrives from a different direction. The inspection is what separates the two cases, and you get the finding either way: if the roof has a year or two left, you will hear that, along with what a repair would buy you and the option to just do the repair.
Where leaks start
In rough order of how often they turn out to be the cause, not in order of how dramatic they look.
How it runs
01
On the roof and, where we can get to it, in the attic. We are looking for the entry point, not the stain.
02
Photographs of what we found and a plain explanation of why the water ended up where it did.
03
The failed part is replaced, not sealed over. If the deck under it has gone soft, that comes out too.
04
If the roof around the repair is near the end, you will hear that now rather than at the next leak.
Common questions
The questions homeowners ask us most often about leaks and repairs. If yours is not here, call and ask.
One section, when the rest of the roof still has life in it. That covers most repair calls. The exception is a roof that is failing across the whole field, where fixing one corner does not stop the next leak arriving somewhere else. If that is what the inspection finds, you will hear it before you spend anything, with the photographs to back it up.
Close, rarely perfect. Asphalt shingles weather, granule color shifts over years of sun, and manufacturers change their blends. A repair on a ten-year-old roof will be visible if you go looking for it from the right angle. On a slope you see from the street, we will tell you what to expect before we start rather than after.
Yes, where the roof can be reached safely. A tarp is a stopgap: it keeps water out of the house until conditions allow the actual repair. It is emergency work, not the fix, and it is quoted separately from the repair itself.
Sometimes. It depends entirely on why it is leaking. A split pipe boot on a twenty-year-old roof that is otherwise holding its granules is worth repairing. A leak coming through exposed mat in the middle of the field on that same roof is not, because the field itself is finished. The inspection is what separates the two, and it costs you nothing either way.
Often not. A dried stain does not fade on its own, because drywall and paint hold the mark. The test is whether it grows or darkens after the next real rain. If it does, call us back and we will come and look at it again.
If the cause is a covered event such as wind or hail, yes, and how carefully the damage is documented matters as much as the damage itself. See insurance restoration for how that runs. Ordinary wear and age are not covered events under a homeowners policy, so a worn-out roof is not something we will write up as storm damage.
Once a year is a reasonable rhythm for a roof past about ten years old, and again after any storm that brought hail or sustained high wind. The point of an annual look is that most of what fails first is small: a pipe boot, a length of flashing, a few shingles that lost their seal. Caught at that stage it is a repair. Left for three years it becomes wet decking and a stained ceiling.
Almost always algae, not damage. The streaks are Gloeocapsa magma, a blue-green algae that feeds on the limestone filler in asphalt shingles and thrives in the humidity here. It is cosmetic rather than structural, and it does not mean the roof is failing. It can be cleaned, though a worn roof is often not worth cleaning. What does matter is telling algae staining apart from granule loss, because they look similar from the ground and only one of them is a problem.
The rest of the exterior
Tell us where the house is and what you are seeing inside. We will find where the water is actually getting in.
Rather talk it through? (252) 544-6845
Four details and we will call you back to set a time that works.
