About Roof Leaks

A roof leak can be caused by some defect of the roofing material, or a defective installation. It can also be caused by problems with siding material above the roof line, windows above the roof line, an incorrect gutter installation, even a defective chimney pan or cap. The point is that a roof leak may not be a roof leak at all, but something other than the roof. The challenge in repairing a leak is finding its source. It starts on the outside and ends up inside on ceilings, walls, and floors; but the pathway between where it starts and where it ends is the problem, because it is invisible, hidden under the shingles, felt or plywood. Herein lies the challenge.

There are a number of ways to repair a roof leak.

One surefire way is to sell you house and move away.

Another is to replace the roof over the area where the leak is occurring. This should also include any walls or windows near the area of the leak, as these could also be the culprit. This is pretty drastic approach, and is certain to stop the leak, having just replaced everything remotely close to it. Unfortunately, it is also very expensive, and probably unnecessary.

It can be done in a much more economical way, and it is this approach that Dr. Roof offers to their customers. It is the approach of using the process of elimination, where Dr. Roof repairmen search for obvious and visible defects and causes of leaks, such as defective flashings, holes, torn or missing shingles, broken seals and incorrect connections between the roof and penetrations. Having identified the defect, the repairman completes the repairs, thus eliminating these defects as a source of leak. Usually the repairs eliminate the leak, and the job is successfully completed at a fraction of the cost of the drastic surefire approach, described above.

Sometimes, however, even after repairing such obvious defects, the leak may still persist, which if all previous repairs have been done correctly, indicate that the leak is coming from some non obvious invisible hidden source. An example of this would be a hole or a tear under a shingle, which cannot be seen. To find this would require the time consuming and painstaking job of lifting each and every shingle to see what lies beneath. Having previously eliminated the obvious, additional and more complicated investigative work now needs to be done to both find the source, and to repair it.

If this should happen, and the hidden source of the leak is discovered and the additional repairs correct the problem, the cost of all the repairs, the obvious and visible, as well as the hidden, are still likely to be less than the total replacement of the entire roof, window and wall area, that the drastic approach requires for the certain elimination of leaks. Even though there is a risk that the correction of obvious defects may not correct the leak appearing in the house, the trade off offered by the process of elimination is a more economical one, and well worth it, because the repairs to the obvious and visible usually corrects the problem the first time anyway.

All defects should be fixed anyway, just in case they are a source of leak for the immediate problem, or some problem that will occur in the future.