Decisions

Repair or replace: five questions, in order

This decision gets made badly in both directions. People replace roofs that needed a flashing repair, and people repair roofs that have been telling them for three years that they are finished. Five questions settle it, and they have to be asked in this order.

One: is the failure a component or the system?

A component failure is one thing that has broken while everything around it is sound: a split pipe boot, a length of step flashing, a nail pop, a section of ridge cap taken off in a gust. Those are repairs, and they are usually straightforward ones.

A system failure is the roof doing the same thing in many places at once. Sealant strips released across a slope, granule loss over the whole field, mat cracking from ultraviolet exposure, or fasteners that no longer hold anywhere because the deck is soft. Repairing one instance of a system failure buys a season.

Two: how much life is left in the rest of it?

Repairing a detail on a roof with twelve years left is maintenance. Doing the same repair on a roof with two years left is spending money on something you will remove. The awkward middle is a roof with four to seven years left, and that is where the answer depends on what the repair costs relative to living with it, and on whether you intend to still be in the house.

How long a roof lasts sets the expectation for this climate, which is shorter than the national one. An inspection establishes where yours actually is, which is the part that matters.

Three: can it physically be repaired?

• Brittleness. Old shingles crack when they are lifted, and ultraviolet load gets them there earlier here than in a cooler market. On a roof past a certain point a repair breaks more than it fixes, and any honest roofer will say so before starting.
• Availability. Discontinued profiles and colors cannot be matched. Sometimes an acceptable substitute exists; sometimes the only match is shingles pulled from a less visible slope.
• Weathering. Even where the product is still made, a new shingle next to a slope that has spent years in this sun will not match. On a back slope that is cosmetic. On the front elevation it is not.
• Layers. A repair on a roof with two layers has to deal with both, and the deck underneath has never been seen.
• The coastal exception. In the designated catastrophe area a repair that stays under 100 square feet and does not touch the decking generally needs no windstorm inspection, and one that grows beyond that generally does. It is worth knowing which side of the line a repair sits on before it starts — see windstorm cover and TWIA.

Four: is there water damage underneath?

A leak that has been running for a season is a roofing repair. A leak that has been running for years has usually taken the deck with it, and in a hot humid attic that deterioration runs faster than most people expect. Once the deck is compromised over an area you are into removing roofing to get at it, and at that point the repair-versus-replace arithmetic changes completely because most of the labor is happening anyway.

Five: is there an event behind it?

If the damage came from a specific storm, the question is not only technical. Property policies require prompt notice of a loss, and a repair done quietly today can make the extent of the original damage harder to establish later. Recorded storm dates lists the significant hail and wind days with dates, Storm Check filters the same data to your ZIP code, and the insurance section explains how the process works.

One Texas-specific wrinkle belongs here: if your wind and hail deductible is a percentage of the dwelling limit rather than a flat amount, a repair that would have been worth claiming elsewhere may not clear the deductible here at all. Work out the real number before you decide — see percentage deductibles.

When a repair is definitely the right answer

1. A single flashing detail on an otherwise sound roof. Chimneys, skylights and wall lines fail on their own schedule and always have.
2. Pipe boots. The rubber collar perishes long before the shingles do, and ultraviolet exposure here perishes it sooner. Replacing boots on a ten-year-old roof is normal maintenance, not a stopgap.
3. Storm damage confined to one slope, where the rest of the roof is still sealed and in condition.
4. Ridge cap or a few courses lost in a gust, on a roof that is otherwise sound.
5. Anything that is letting water in right now, regardless of the long-term plan — and especially between June and November, when the next system is a forecast rather than a possibility. Stop the water first, decide afterwards; that is what emergency tarping is for.

When repairing is throwing money away

• The roof has already been repaired two or three times in different places.
• The shingles are no longer bonded to each other across whole slopes.
• The mat is visible, cracking, or the shingles are curling at the corners across the sunny slopes.
• The deck is soft in more than one place.
• You are repairing to sell, and the inspection report will list the same conditions anyway.