Roof Repair in Friendswood, TX
Friendswood houses have been added to, re-roofed two or three times, and many of them have been through a flood. Each of those leaves something behind, and the roof is usually where it shows up first.
Call 832-662-4107
Additions leak at the join, not in the middle
A great many Friendswood houses have grown — a sunroom, a converted garage, a primary suite on the back. Each addition brings a new roof plane meeting the original house, and that junction is the hardest thing on a roof to waterproof.
Done properly it needs step flashing woven into every shingle course up the wall, with counter-flashing let into the siding or brick above it so water running down the wall is directed out rather than behind. That is roofing work.
The common failure: an addition built by a general contractor, with the roof-to-wall junction sealed by caulk and roofing cement rather than flashed properly. It holds for a few years. Then it does not, and the leak appears inside the original house rather than the addition.
If your leak is anywhere near where the house changes shape, that is the first place to look.
Third and fourth roofs
Housing stock here runs largely from the 1960s and 1970s. A house that age has been re-roofed two or three times, and what matters is what accumulated underneath.
- Layer count. Most codes cap shingles at two layers. A third means full tear-off, which roughly doubles the disposal cost — and it is not optional.
- Decking condition. Fifty years of nail holes, and possibly plank decking rather than plywood.
- Accumulated repairs. Decades of roofing cement over flashing, mismatched patches, and vents that were sealed over rather than replaced.
- Ventilation added piecemeal. Often exhaust with no matching intake, which does very little.
Get the layer count verified before accepting a quote. A contractor who assumes one layer and finds three has a conversation with you on the morning of the job, and it is never a good one.
What flooding leaves behind on a roof
Clear Creek has flooded Friendswood more than once, and water on the ground does not touch a roof. What follows sometimes does.
Remediation means the attic gets opened repeatedly, insulation comes out, ductwork and equipment are replaced, and people who are not roofers walk on decking that was never meant for traffic. New penetrations get cut and old ones patched.
It surfaces two or three years later as a leak at a vent or a flashing point, and by then nobody connects it to the flood. If your house flooded and had attic work, mention it — it changes where a roofer looks first.
Mature trees, and the limb problem
Friendswood has real canopy, which is good for a roof's ultraviolet exposure and bad for everything else. Leaf litter dams valleys and gutters. Limbs touching the roof abrade shingles in ordinary wind. And a falling limb can fracture the shingle mat and crack decking while leaving the surface looking almost untouched.
Photograph any limb before you clear it away, note the date, and have the roof checked within a week.
Before you call
- Whether the leak is near where the house was added to.
- How old the house is and how many times it has been re-roofed, if you know.
- Whether it has flooded and whether attic work was done afterwards.
- Whether a limb has come down recently.
