Flashing, valleys, boots
Roof repair
Roof repair and replacement and skylight replacement across Oklahoma City. Free roofing inspections, and a straight answer about whether the roof needs a repair or a replacement.
Chapter 01
Leaks are almost never where the water shows up
Water lands on the roof, gets through a failed detail, then travels. It runs along the top of the decking, down a rafter, across a ceiling joist, and drops through the first seam of drywall it finds. The stain on your ceiling can easily be several feet from the actual hole, sometimes on the other side of the room.
So we do not start at the stain. We start above it and work uphill, checking every penetration and transition on that plane until we find the one that is letting water in. Sometimes that means running water on the roof in sections to reproduce it.
This is also why sealant is not a repair. Caulk over the symptom and you have moved the leak, not stopped it, and you have made the real origin harder to find next winter.
Completed dark charcoal shingle roof on a brick single-story Oklahoma City home
Flashing, valleys, boots, and the details that actually fail
Pipe boots are the most common single failure we find. The rubber collar around a plumbing vent hardens and splits from ultraviolet exposure, usually somewhere between eight and twelve years in, and then it drips straight down the pipe into the ceiling below. It is a cheap part and an easy fix if it is caught before the decking rots.
Step flashing at walls and chimneys is next. It fails when someone reused it on a re-roof, when it was replaced with a continuous strip instead of proper stepped pieces, or when it was tarred over rather than woven into the courses. Valleys fail when there is no metal under a closed cut, or when debris dams up and pushes water sideways under the shingles.
We also handle skylight replacement. Skylights leak at the curb flashing far more often than through the glass, and a unit that has been sealed and resealed a few times is usually cheaper to replace than to keep chasing.
Chapter 03
When a repair is honest, and when it is throwing money at a dead roof
A repair is the right call when the roof is otherwise sound: granules still holding across the field, shingles still sealed and flexible, and the failure is confined to a detail or a small area. That describes most of the leaks we get called to.
It stops being the right call when the field itself is finished. If the mat is cracking across whole slopes, if shingles snap instead of bending when you lift a tab, if the same roof has already had three or four patches in different places, then each repair is buying a season and the next one will be somewhere new.
We will tell you which of those you have. If the roof still has years in it we would rather do the repair and keep the number small, and if it does not we will say so and show you the photographs that make the case. If storm damage caused it, that changes the conversation again, because it may belong in a claim rather than on your card.
FREE roofing inspections and FREE estimates. Emergency services available. Licensed OK CIB #80002439 and fully insured.