Roof Repair: Keeping Your Roof Over Your Head

If you own a home, you own a roof and roofs tend to need repair to keep going the entire lifetime of a house. Your roof may be what actually covers your home but it can also be considered the foundation of your home. A roof that is intact can keep a home structurally sound and safe from the elements for decades or longer. In fact most roofs come with warranties that last anywhere from twenty years to fifty years depending on the workmanship and materials. Twenty to fifty years is more than most people even stay in one home anymore so the likely hood that you will ever actually have to replace your home’s roof are not huge. But the chances are greater that you may need to actually do the occasional roof repair job to keep everything intact.

Your roof comes under fire from the elements every day, surviving windstorms, pelting hail or rain showers, the unforgiving weight of snow and the relentless waves of summer heat. Even the toughest roof will occasionally weaken from this on slaughter of elements. And all it takes to cause your home to suffer water damage, structural damage or create an opening within for mold to take root is one roof nail coming out, or one shingle blowing off undetected in a storm. In other words, it doesn’t take a huge event to lead to the need for a roof repair job.

Water can find any opening to get in, even from something as small as a nail hole and once water finds an entrance it can wick along the ceiling until it settles, pools up and begins to do as much damage as possible, as quickly as possible. If you suspect your roof is damaged you need to have a roofer access how damaged before the damage continues to grow.

Before you hire any roofing contractor though take the basic steps to ensure you hire a professional licensed contractor. Check with the state’s contractor board to make sure the roofer is current on their license and doesn’t have any complaints against their license. In most states this is an easy on line check you can do yourself in minutes with just a name or contractor’s license number. Don’t risk hiring a contractor who has marks against their record, it’s a red flag you shouldn’t dismiss no matter how good their bid may be or how personal able they are.

The rule of thumb when dealing with contractors is to get at least three written bids so you can make an intelligent business decision regarding who to hire. For repairs the bids should be comparable and spell out what is being allotted for materials and labor. Your bid should also include a potential start and finish date and spell out who is responsible for hauling away any roofing material wastes. 

Small roof repair jobs can help keep your roof in good shape and stretch out the life time of your roof to its full capacity.