Why did this Clifton home’s roof leak only during heavy rain?
Hi, my name is Steve from rooftwins.com. Today I received a phone call from a home owner living in Clifton, Virginia and he was looking for a free estimate for roof repair work. Now when I spoke to him on the phone he said, “Steve, I’ve got a leak and the only time it happens is when there’s a very heavy rain.” So when I arrived to his home he showed me exactly where the water was leaking inside his garage directly below a downspout that was coming down from the upper gutter and down to the lower roof.
And so he said to me, he said, “Steve, when it rains really heavy, that water is flowing out of the downspout and landing on the lower roof and that’s what’s causing the leak.” And he said, “What I’d like you to do is attach a downspout to this elbow here and connect it to the lower gutter and then that will resolve the problem.”
And I told him, I said, “You know, it makes all the sense in the world, but unfortunately, it won’t help.” And I said, “I cannot tell you how many times I hear homeowners saying exactly the same thing as what you just said and it makes all the sense in the world. But unfortunately, this leak is originating from many different areas. I can almost guarantee it.”
So where you see where the roof and the wall meet I have this arrow here and an arrow here, we need to take up all the roofing material from the corner post up to the ridge and inspect and repair to make sure there’s no nails in the protective step flashing. And here, this picture here just gives you an illustration. It’s not really that clear, but where you see this light blue right here, that’s aluminum and it’s in the shape of an L and part of the aluminum goes underneath the roof shingles and the other part of the step flashing goes behind the siding.
And you never put nails too close to the wall into the step flashing because if you do, you’re going to develop a leak. And sometimes that leak won’t develop until ten years after the roof was installed, but once a mistake is made by the initial roofing contractor it’s just a matter of time before the water finds his mistake and the homeowner develops a leak.
So we need to remove all the roofing material from the corner post all the way up to the top, repair or replace any damaged step flashing and then re-shingle that area. Now also on the upper roof I went inside the home to do an infrared scan and I knew the scan would come out very good because it only rained like a couple days ago. So whatever was wet inside the walls or on the ceiling I would see it very clearly.
Now when I did the scan I saw some moisture up here but I didn’t see any moisture in between the blue dotted lines where the water’s traveling inside the wall. Now the reason why, the insulation here never got touched and the drywall was never touched. So the water dropped down inside the open wall cavity and that’s why they see the stain over here on the garage. And there was a little bit of moisture inside the home upstairs as well. So what we need to do is remove all the roofing material here in the valley. We’re going to install an ice and water shield then re-shingle that area.
Now another thing, very important, and this is something that’s not noticed by many people is when this roof was installed which is an architectural roof the contractor used roofing nail guns. Now with a nail gun you can fasten anywhere from five to eight nails a second and if you don’t pay attention to where you’re fastening each and every nail, there will be nails exposed at the horizontal joints where the shingles join together.
But even if you went up on the roof and you’re looking at the face of the shingle you won’t see that nail. The only way you can see it is lifting up the shingles where the shingles join together. And this picture here, this is exactly what I’m talking about.
So what we need to do is lift up the shingles at all the joints on this side and this side in between the red dotted lines and any nails that are exposed at the joints we’re going to seal it with a Geoseal Tripolymer sealant. Then we’re going to press aluminum step flashing into the sealant, then reseal the shingle again.
Now once all these procedures are completed to this home in Clifton, Virginia, they will not have any more roof leaks. My name is Steve from Roof Twins and I thank you so much for watching our video. Have a wonderful day.
Clifton Roof Repair appeared first on RoofTwins.com.
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