The million-dollar question

By Emma Peterson. 

Learn from an expert how to determine when your roof needs repair or replacement. 

Beyond the initial purchase of the house, a roof is one of the most expensive things for homeowners to invest in their home. In this AskARoofer podcast episode, Megan Ellsworth and Lauren White sit down with Stan Robinson from Pacific West Roofing to talk about how homeowners can know whether their roof needs a repair or replacement.  

No matter how well you take care of your roof, there comes a time where the issues begin cropping up. There are obvious signs, such as water leaking into the home, but some of the issues might be harder to see from within the home. Stan explained, “About year 12 to year 15, we start getting individual problems. A common one is neoprene pipe flashings failing around the pipes and creating leaks. And homeowners didn't know it until somebody went up to clean the gutters and went, ‘Oh my god, the pipe flashings are all gone.’” This is why it’s crucial for homeowners to have regular maintenance done on their roof system, Stan recommends “people should start looking at it every other year starting at 10 years and when you get to 16, you do it every year and do a full roof inspection, double-check everything and button down anything that's got potential issues, especially again the skylights, the pipe flashings, the chimneys, things like that.” 

If a maintenance team finds larger problems than regular buttoning down, the next step is to decide whether a repair will suffice, or a replacement is necessary. This is an important question as the difference in cost between these options can be anywhere from $1 to $1 million. So how do you know what’s right for your home? Stan explained, “Roof repair is trying to breathe life into a halfway dead roof by doing repair work, replacing pipe flashings, re-flashing, skylights, chimneys, sometimes replacing valley metal. Replacement obviously is where you remove everything down to the roof deck and starting over with all full replacement, all new parts.” While the replacement is typically a larger investment, it also usually lasts longer than a replacement. As Stan explained, “If we just replace a chimney flashing, that leaves 98% of the rest of the roof. It's like herding cats. You're going to fix one, chase over and fix the other one, chase over here and fix the other one.” He recommends that when repair estimates start to get up to 20-30% of the cost of an entire new roof, it’s time to choose replacement. 

Read the transcript, Listen to the podcast or Watch the recording for more tips on choosing between a roof repair and a full replacement.