Dealing With a Leaking Roof
A leaking roof on your house is not always an indication that the entire roof is bad, and in many cases, a residential roof repair contractor can fix the leak quickly and easily. If your roof is leaking, you will need to determine where the problem is, and hiring a residential roof repair company to come and inspect it is often the best way to check the condition of the entire roof.
Finding The Leak
Many times a leak in the roof of your home is small, but there are some things that can make it easier to find if you are not sure where it is at. A leak coming into the home may be dripping in one room, but the leak is not actually above that room.
Water coming in can travel along the trusses or rafters in your attic or crawl space and appear somewhere across the home from where the water is entering the structure. The residential roof repair contractor will inspect the roof outside for damage, but they will also need access to the attic space to check for signs of water entering and traveling to other parts of the home.
Often wet spots on the underside of the roof will indicate water leaking through the shingles. These spots can be associated with damage on the roof to determine where the leak is.
Repairing The Roof
Shingle roofing is very common on residential structures, and repairing leaks on these buildings is typically straightforward. The shingles around the damaged roofing can be loosened so that the roofer can pull the damaged shingles out and discard them.
The residential roof repair contractor will insert new shingles up under the existing good shingles and then secure the new shingles and the ones around the repair with new nails. Sometimes the roofer only needs to replace a few shingles on the roof to fix the leak, but there are times when a large area needs to be replaced, and the process is the same, just on a larger scale.
As long as the roof's wood structure and vapor barrier are intact, they do not need to be replaced, but if the roofer encounters a rotted area on the wood structure, it will need to be replaced. The work can be done without stripping the entire roof if the area is small enough, but there are times when it may not be possible to make spot repairs.
Talk with the contractor doing the work on your home about the damage and their recommendations for repairs. The residential roofing repair contractor will help you determine how to handle the repairs or if a complete roof replacement is a better solution for your home.