Roof Leak Repair in St. Louis

Manufacturer specification governs every component we install, and we explain the steps rather than skipping one to shave the price.

Water gets through the roof surface, lands on the deck or a rafter, then runs downhill along framing until it meets something absorbent. By the time it reaches drywall it can be eight or ten feet from where it came in, and on a shallow rafter run considerably further. A contractor who caulks above the ceiling stain and leaves has fixed nothing, which is why a good share of the leak calls we take are from homeowners who already paid somebody once.

We work it backwards. The ceiling stain sets a starting point, the attic side shows the path through wet insulation, a rust trail on a nail, a darkened rafter or daylight at a joint. From there we go to the roof surface and check the things that actually fail, in the order they actually fail.

Flashing comes first, every time. Step flashing where a roof plane meets a wall, counterflashing cut into chimney mortar, kickout flashing at the bottom of a wall run, and valley metal. These are the leaks. Field shingles in the middle of a slope, away from anything, fail far less often than people assume.

Penetrations come second. Plumbing vent boots crack at the rubber collar, typically somewhere around twelve to fifteen years, and they sit high on the slope so a small failure wets a large area. Furnace and bath fan terminations, satellite mounts and abandoned antenna anchors belong on the same list.

There is also a category of leak that is not a roof leak at all, and we will tell you when you have one. Deteriorated chimney mortar and open crowns, failed tuckpointing on a brick parapet, condensation from an under-ventilated attic, and ice damming at the eave all put water on a ceiling without a single shingle being wrong. On the older brick housing stock through the city and the inner-ring suburbs, masonry is a genuinely common culprit.

We water-test before calling it finished. A hose run in stages from low on the slope upward, with someone watching inside, either reproduces the leak or proves the repair. Guessing is free. Being wrong twice is not.