Tales of Colorado Springs Roof Repairs

In the Colorado market, the primary driver for replacing a roof is hail. Although hail does significant damage to your roof, in reality, it rarely causes damage that immediately makes your roof leak. There are of course exceptions to this. In my 40+ year roofing career I have had a few instances where I’ve seen hailstones big enough to blow right through the roof, through the plywood and through the sheet rock right into a person‘s living room, but that is extremely rare. When someone asks for my advice concerning the roof, which usually happens when I’m there looking at some particular issue, I tell them that I will look the roof over and give them an unbiased report.

We are no longer in the roof replacement business, but we are not novices. 

Our company has done many, many roofing projects with all types of products and materials. Although, this was not our primary focus we occasionally took on very complex and problematic jobs that required a great deal of attention to detail for the resolution of chronic leak issues. Our second motive was that we occasional took on the reroofing of a house as a training tool for our employees so they could become familiar with the entire industry and process. 

Just as a side note. It’s easy to criticize how a system was installed when you’re doing a repair, but it changes your perspective when you’ve walked in someone else’s moccasins for a while. You need to do some of those 13 hour days in the Summer sun and you need to experience the decisions you have to make when a sudden rain storm comes up and threatens to drown a house. Unfortunately, some of the most important details of a roofing project have to be done right at the end when the crew is the most fatigued, night is falling and you have to bring it to an end and move to another job the next day. Before you blast the roofers too much, go work on a black surface from before sun rise to after dark in hundred degree heat carrying heavy loads and bent over on your knees for most of it. Then right at the end have someone hand you a geometry quiz and see just how sharp you are. 

Colorado Springs Roof Repairs and What to Look For?

Enough of that. Back to inspecting the roof. 

I get up there and look everything over.
I look for hail damage. 
I look for obvious dents in the heater vent caps and attic vents that record the significance of impacts. 
I see if any plastic vent have been broken through. 

Roof Inspection; Damage Report

I pay particular attention to the ridge shingles on a composition roof. The ridge where two slopes come together have so many layers of felt and shingles folding over the roof slope change that it becomes rather spongy there. There is no solid substrate to back up the shingles and resist an impact. Thus the hail impacts are much more obvious in this location than any other. As a general rule, if a home owner gets on their own house and sees no damage to the ridge shingles there is usually not much concern for the rest of the roof. 

You don’t have to have x-ray vision. Really bad hail will knock all the granules off of the shingles at impact and the worst cases actually break through the shingles. When it’s like this you don’t have to guess. You don’t even have to get on the roof. Just climb up the ladder and peak over the gutter. It will stare you right in the face. When I get down to report to the home owner and I relay what I’ve seen. I usually try to guess the age of the roof. Before I advise them on the course of action, I ask them a series of questions.

What’s best for one home owner, isn’t for another. As an example, if you have hail blemishes on your roof but it looks fine from the ground and you have no intention of moving until they wheel you out horizontally. There’s no motivation to re-roof if nothing‘s leaking and there’s no likelihood of anything to leak. However, if you know there is a move in your near future those blemishes will probably glitch the sale of your house and proactively reroofing while the insurance company is willing to pay is probably the best way to go. 

Colorado Springs Roof Repairs; Ask the Right Question

I ask the following Questions

How long have you lived in your house?

When was the house last reroofed?

Have you had any leaks that required repairs?

Were the repairs successful?

If they weren’t successful, how many times have you attempted to have it fixed?

To the best of your knowledge, what type of weather event does it take to have this leak manifest?

Does it have to rain all day long or does our typical 15 minute afternoon spritz cause it to leak?

Does it just create a stain or does it actually drip?

Do you get a teaspoon in a bucket or do you have to empty the bucket once in a while?

How long does it keep dripping after the storm has passed and it’s no longer raining?

I need data, and if you have not paid particular attention and can’t give me the data that I need, then I may have to put on my Sherlock Holmes hat and get the data myself. When a person initially calls about a roof leak I try to gather as much data over the phone as possible. I also try to offer them as much advice where they can diagnose it on their own. It doesn’t cost me much to talk on the phone and I can keep working and talking at the same time. I prefer that when somebody hires me that they know they have a problem, they know they want it fixed, they’re confident in my abilities, and they’re ready to spend money.

Providing the Best Advice

Back to how I would advise them.

If they’re roof is in decent shape and there’s nothing obvious that needs attention. I advise them to inspect some obvious things around the house and get a baseline of the current situation so they have something to compare it to in the future. This entails an exterior inspection as well as an interior inspection. Ceilings are usually out of sight and out of mind, but I would recommend that you walk through your entire house with a flashlight and look at all the ceilings for obvious water stains or obvious patches where stains might have been in the past. If you see a stain, and you’re not sure if it’s from an active leak then you need a method for a base line comparison. The simplest way to do this is to take a pencil and make small dash marks around the perimeter of the stain. Do it small enough where you can’t see it unless you’re up there looking at it. 

Next time it’s raining all day long, which in this high desert environment may not happen but once every two years, check all those places again and you’ll be able to discern if the stain has grown and you can decide what to do about it.

Inspect More Than the Roof Itself

On the outside of the house, look at all the vulnerable things that hail usually damages.

Window screens.
Hot tub covers.
Barbecue covers.
Lawn furniture.
The fins around your air conditioner. 
The finish on your fences and decks.
The little PVC molding around your windows. 

My experience is that if you take photos of all these things as well as your stains on the ceiling and put it on a thumb drive that you keep in your insurance file then it will be readily available for comparison when you’re in the middle of a severe panic because your house got beat to pieces by a major hail storm.

Once again, you need data to make a good decision.  

When you know that you have an active leak and the evidence shows that you don’t need an entire roof replacement then you have to discern where it’s coming from and the appropriate course of action so the issue is dealt with once and for all, and you can forget about it. Sometimes this comes from a simple visual inspection and deductive reasoning, but many times it requires crawling in the attic and seeing the extent of damage or doing a progressive water test.

Water Tests; Where Does the Flow Go?

Water tests are particularly important as a diagnostic tool when there are multiple factors that could contribute to a leak, but the leak would manifest in the same place if any one of them was a contributor. A water test is not just going up and spraying the roof, it’s a very systematic and methodical approach with a whole lot of scientific method being applied. 

You analyze the data.
You form a hypothesis.
You devise and execute an experiment. 

A water test must go through a logical process of elimination working from the lowest possible source of intrusion to the highest. It cannot be rushed for you must apply enough water to allow a path from the probable entry point to the manifestation point. The moisture typically has to saturate everything along the path before you ever see a drip, such as shingles, felt, plywood, insulation, sheet rock and paint. The process seems like it takes forever but 40 years of experience has taught that if you don’t continue spraying all the area for a full 15 minutes or until you see a drip your test is insufficient. 

When 15 minutes is up and there is no apparent leak you can move up hill to the next suspect point of entry and start the process over. Once you make it leak you have to fix that spot and then re-perform the water test to confirm your success. It is a regular occurrence when we have been hired to fix a reoccurring leak where numerous other contractors have made an attempt, but they were unsuccessful. Why? There are multiple contributors to the leak! The other contractor may have fixed one problem, but there were multiple other problems contributing to this one leak. Unfortunately, you can be a very good repair man and fix one spot exceptionally well, but if you aren’t holistic in your approach, you have essentially failed no matter how well you’ve done the repair on the one spot.

On these complex problem areas after you have confirmed that the lowest point of entry has been successfully repaired then you can move up to the next probable spot and when that spot has been eliminated as a suspect or been repaired, you can keep moving up until every contributor has been eliminated. It’s a very difficult thing to do after spending such a long process repairing the situation, but you can’t walk away until you have essentially tested your work under the worst conditions.

You see this sign in repair shops and it’s a good motto.
“If you don’t have time to do it right in the first place, how are you gonna find the time to come back and do it right later?” 

When that rain storm comes that only happens every two years and the phone starts ringing. You certainly don’t need to go diagnosing things you did years ago. If you’re going to stay in business year after year, you have to do your best on every single job with the motive that once you’re done, you never ever have to go back.