Signs You Need a Roof Repair: Lawn, Ladder and Attic Checks

The signs you need a roof repair show up in three places: on the shingles, at the roof edge, and in the attic. You can check all three without going on the roof. A lawn, a ladder at the eaves and the attic hatch are enough. The catch is that a sign rarely sits right on top of its cause. A stain on the bedroom ceiling may start at a pipe boot three rafters uphill. Water behind the eavestrough may start at the roof edge above it. So the job is to read each sign and then look for where it starts.

When to look

Twice a year is a good habit here. Once after the spring melt, and once after the first hard fall wind.

Spring shows you what the winter did. The National Research Council’s digest on ice on roofs explains why the north side can get more ice. A south slope goes bare much sooner than a north slope, and that can add to the ice on the north side. It also says valleys collect the melt water from both slopes, so very large ice dams can build at the bottom of a valley. Those are the places to look first in April. A cottage heated only on weekends can melt and refreeze snow at the edge the same way, from Wasaga Beach to Collingwood and inland to Stayner.

Fall shows you what the wind did. Do the lawn check the morning after a big blow, before the leaves and snow hide what came off.

From the lawn

Take a pair of binoculars and walk all the way around the house. Stand back far enough to see each slope. Binoculars help with these shingle signs:

• Curled edges or cupped tabs. The edges are curled, or the tabs are cupped.
• Bald spots. Look for patches where the granules are missing.
• Cracked shingles. Look for cracks.
• Moss. It grows on roof surfaces that don’t get much sun. Owens Corning says it can hold moisture against the roof surface.

Then look at the lines of the roof, not just the surface. Is the ridge straight? Does a slope dip between rafters? A dip is not a shingle problem. It points to the deck or the framing under it, and nobody should walk on it to find out.

Two things you might see don’t need a repair. Owens Corning says dark streaks come from algae and may not harm the shingles, though they won’t look good. And a few shingles on the lawn after one storm, all from one spot, is a small repair, not a verdict on the roof.

From a ladder at the eaves

Set the ladder against the house at a corner, on firm ground. Stay on the ladder. The edge of the roof is where water leaves it, so it is where many faults show.

• The eavestrough. Look inside it. A heavy layer of granules from shingles that are not new tells you the surface is wearing.
• Water behind the eavestrough. On a rainy day, watch from below. Water dripping between the eavestrough and the house means the roof edge is not sending water into it. Our post on what a drip edge does explains that part.
• The fascia board. Push a thumbnail or a key into the bottom edge of the board. If it sinks in, the wood has been wet for a long time. Paint that has lifted in a band under the eaves points to the same thing.
• The first row of shingles. From the ladder you can see whether the edge shingles are lifted or missing. You can also see whether the metal edge under them is bent.

The part that trips people up is next. The eavestrough, the fascia and the soffit are not roof parts. We don’t repair them. When they rot or fall, another trade replaces them. But if the water that ruined them came off the roof, the new ones get wet the same way. Fix the roof edge first, then call the eavestrough installer.

From the attic hatch

The attic tells you what the shingles can’t. Go up on a dry day with a good flashlight. Stay on the framing, never on the insulation or the drywall between it. If the hatch only lets you look, look.

• Daylight. Turn off the flashlight. Light through the roof deck means a hole.
• Dark wood. Shine the light along the underside of the deck, near the eaves, the chimney and every pipe. Dark or soft wood has been wet.
• Rusty nail tips. Nails that poke through the deck are cold in winter. Rust on them means moisture, often from condensation.
• Wet or flattened insulation. Insulation that is matted in one spot has been dripped on.
• Frost on a cold morning. Frost on the underside of the deck can melt on a warm day and look like a leak. In our view, the fix for that may be in the attic, not the roof.

Then think about the winter. The NRC digest says the main cause of snow melting on a roof is heat lost from the house through it. Melt water drains down to the eaves, where some of it freezes. If you get big icicles every winter, the shingles at the edge are getting the blame for an attic problem. Read about attic insulation and ventilation before the shingles are patched.

Inside the house

The last place to look is the room you live in.

In our view, a brown ring on the ceiling is the sign to check first. It can mean an active leak, or an old one that was fixed and never painted. Check it after the next rain. A ring that grows, or a soft spot in the drywall, is active.

Peeling paint high on an outside wall, under the eaves, points to the roof edge above. A stain around a chimney points to its flashing. A stain on a bathroom ceiling can trace back to the vent or the pipe above that room.

Which signs can’t wait

Some signs can sit until you get a quote. Others can’t.

Call now: water dripping inside, a wet stain that grows after rain, daylight through the deck, shingles gone in a patch that shows the underlayment or the bare wood, or a slope that has started to sag.

Book an inspection: curled or cracked shingles in one area, lifted edge shingles, moss, a dry old stain, rusty nail tips with no water stain.

Watch it: dark streaks with no other signs, or one or two shingles off after a windstorm with nothing showing underneath. Then check again after the next storm.

In our view, a single sign in one spot points to a roof repair on that spot. Owens Corning’s list is about when a roof may need to be replaced. In our view, if curled, bald or cracked shingles show up on most slopes, a repair buys less time. Our roof replacement page explains what a full re-roof includes.

We get it

A tube of roofing caulk is cheaper than a truck. If it’s raining and the ceiling is dripping, a bucket and a towel are fine for tonight. But caulk on top of a lifted shingle or a cracked pipe boot is not a repair. It hides the sign you need to see next spring. Write down where you found the water so the roofer can match it to the roof above.

What we look for when we come

Bring us the sign and where you found it. The source is often uphill from it, so that is where the search goes: the attic over the stain, then the flashing, the vents and the valley above the spot. A deck that has gone soft under a leak gets new wood before new shingles go on it. Our page on roof plywood replacement covers that part of the job. On a new roof, we put ice and water shield at the eaves and in the valleys.

Questions homeowners ask

What damages a roof the most around here?

Water that gets in at the joints, and ice. The NRC digest says ice dams form when melt water from the snow drains down to the eaves and freezes. The melt water backed up behind them can leak into the roof. In our view, freeze and thaw can do that more than once a winter on a Georgian Bay roof.

Are granules in the eavestrough a sign of a problem?

On an older roof, our read is that a steady layer of granules, together with bald spots you can see from the lawn, means the shingles are wearing. Owens Corning lists bald spots where granules are missing as one of its signs.

Is a ceiling stain always a roof leak?

No. Frost melting in the attic, an overflowing eavestrough, or an old stain from a leak already fixed can all look the same. Check it after rain and look in the attic above it.

Can one missing shingle wait until spring?

It depends on what is under it. If the underlayment is intact and the shingles around it are flat, our view is that it can wait a short time. If you can see bare wood, or more shingles go in the next wind, get it fixed before the snow.

The one thing we can’t see from here

This list tells you where to look. It can’t tell you what is under the shingles above your stain, or how wet the deck is around the chimney. Only a look at the roof itself settles that. If you want that done, start from our roof repair page.