When Is It Time for a New Roof?

Your Roof Protects Your Home Investment

Choosing, installing and maintaining a new roof for your home may only be a little more interesting than watching paint dry, but if you own a home, you will some day need to repair and maintain your roof or even build a new one. Even sooner, though, and at regular intervals, you should inspect your roof. Here’s why, along with a few tips that might make deciding when and if, and what to pay particular attention to when you carry out a repair or new build of your roof. The advice might even make taking care of your roof less difficult and safer and long-term ownership even more carefree and less expensive.

Roofing Maintenance is Key

Before anything else, when choosing whether to install an entirely new roof or even to repair some of the roof, you should check the local building codes. States, counties, cities, towns and even neighborhoods in many areas have regulations addressing roofs. You do not want to run afoul of them.

In a nutshell, your roof is not a single component, but rather a system of many materials and devices. The failure and/or neglect of any one item will lead to a leaking roof, and the damage, discomfort, monetary cost, and even physical trauma that a leaking roof can entail. Roof failures can lead to a range of harm varying from annoying dripping to life-threatening events, including collapsed ceilings and walls. Put another way, if you do not have a good, working roof, you do not have a home, or at least not a good one. The cost of undoing what you’ve already done is not only expensive, it takes an emotional toll.

Hire a Professional-It’s Less Costly Overall

Roofing that costs less will probably not last as long as roofing that is more expensive. But spending money on expensive roofing materials won’t keep you dry if the roof does not include all the bits and pieces that make a roof work. Therein lies the reason for and the importance of periodic maintenance. A roof is not just a single item nor is it a static one.

A roof’s proper functioning depends on the performance of an assembly of materials and devices and their proper installation. Correct installation and maintenance of each one are absolutely necessary for a roof to do its job. A roof will leak and the house will get damaged if any of the parts that make up a roof are missing or not installed properly or become damaged, clogged, or otherwise dysfunctional.

Many Working Parts Make for a Functional Roof

Proper flashing, intact underlayment, and clean, unobstructed gutters and drains are all part of a working roof. If gutters and/or drains get clogged from falling leaves or tree needles, flower petals, or by debris of almost any kind, even for short periods of time, water will flow over the gutters, back up and flow out of drain pipes and into and onto the home’s ceilings, and into walls and floors.

If the flashing is not properly installed and maintained, rainwater can and will flow into and through shingles and shakes, and joints, and it can even collapse your ceiling, an event that unfortunately occurs too often. A local story comes to mind, the man himself is a very good structural engineer, they rudely awakened in the middle of the night, with both husband and wife pinned down in bed.

Their soaked, sheet-rocked ceiling had fallen on them as they slept. Rainwater had seeped through the roof from clogged, overflowing gutters and through damaged flashing, into the attic space and onto the ceiling sheetrock. The wet, 5/8 inch sheetrock then “melted” and fell on the couple and all over their bedroom. A fireman extricated the unharmed but frightened couple in the middle of the night after the engineer-husband managed to dig out a cell phone on a nightstand covered by some of the fallen debris and called the fire department. That was not a moment you want to experience yourself.

Fortunately, and not accidentally, there are also those moments in life that are as enjoyable as they are because you know with justifiable certainty that you are safe and warm and dry — and will stay that way — even when rain, sleet or snow is falling down with a vengeance on your roof.

Do regular inspections. Do the maintenance. When in doubt about the functionality of your roof, maintenance, or if you have a roof leak, call us at Second Generation Roofing for a free estimate or fill out our contact form and we gladly set up a free roof inspection and give you a prompt quote on what the repair cost will be or the cost of a new roof.