Roof Repair in Cypress, TX

Water does not fall straight down

A leak enters the roof at one point and lands inside at another, sometimes a long way off. Water gets through the roof covering, hits the decking, and then runs. It follows the slope of the plywood, tracks sideways along a rafter, soaks along the top edge of the insulation, and finally drips wherever it runs out of somewhere else to go. That drip is what stains your ceiling.

This is the single reason repairs fail. A roofer who goes up, finds the nearest damaged shingle above the stain, seals it and leaves has fixed something. It just may not be the thing that was letting water in. When the next real rain comes, the stain grows again, and the homeowner concludes the roof needs replacing when it never did.

A proper repair works backwards from the drip: inside the attic first, following the water stain uphill along the framing to where it starts, and only then onto the roof to look at what is directly above that point.

The places a roof usually gives up first

Roofs rarely fail in the middle of a clean run of shingles. They fail where something interrupts the field — where two planes meet, where a pipe comes through, where the roof runs into a wall. Those interruptions are handled by flashing and sealant, and both have a shorter life than the shingles around them.

The usual suspects, in roughly the order a contractor checks them: the rubber boots around plumbing vents, which go brittle and split from years of sun; step flashing where the roof meets a wall or chimney; valleys, where two planes dump their combined water into one channel; the drip edge at the eaves; and nail heads that have backed out and lifted the shingle above them.

None of these are expensive to fix on their own. All of them are expensive to ignore, because what they damage is not the roof — it is the decking, insulation, drywall and framing underneath it.

What Gulf Coast weather does to a repair

Two things here are harder on a roof than in most of the country. The first is sustained heat. Sealant that would last years in a milder climate goes hard and cracks faster on a Houston roof, and a repair that depends entirely on a bead of caulk is a repair with a short clock on it. The second is that rain here tends to arrive all at once. A valley or gutter that copes with steady drizzle can be overwhelmed by a downpour and push water backwards under the shingle edge.

It is worth asking a contractor whether the repair they are proposing is mechanical or chemical — whether it works because a piece of metal now directs water somewhere, or because something is glued. Both have their place. Sealant alone, on a leak that needs flashing, is a repair you will be paying for twice.

Heat is also why a roof here can be nearer the end of its life than its age suggests, particularly if the attic underneath it has never vented properly. If a contractor keeps finding new failures each visit, ask them to look at attic ventilation before you spend more on repairs.

• Show me where the water is actually getting in.
  A contractor who has found the entry point can point at it, usually with a photo. One who is working from the ceiling stain alone is guessing, and you will find out in about a month.
• Is the decking under this still sound?
  This is the difference between a repair that holds and one that fails from underneath. It also tells you whether the price you are being quoted is likely to move once work starts.
• What does your warranty cover, and for how long?
  Repairs carry a workmanship warranty from the contractor, separate from any manufacturer warranty on materials. Get the length and what voids it in writing before work starts, not after.
• Can I see your current insurance certificate?
  Texas does not license roofing contractors, so insurance is the main thing you can actually verify. You want current general liability and workers compensation. Any legitimate contractor produces both without hesitation.