When people hear or think about roof damage they often visualise entire sheet metal roofs being pulled off by hurricane-force winds or tiled roofs being caved in by large trees during a major storm. While these events do happen, they are very rare and the main focus of most roof repair companies is much smaller but more insidious than that. After all, if the damage to your roof is small enough, you may not even know it is there and it can fester and get worse. Here are three ways your roof can become damaged without you knowing it and why you should always be proactive about roof inspections.
Flashing Coming Loose
You may not have even heard of the term flashing before, but it is a small metal lining that is placed where parts of your roof intersect with features like whirlybirds, chimneys, different levels of roofing and so on. This is done to ensure that water does not leak in at these less protected joints, but the flashing itself is not as strong as the tiles or other roofing material around it and it is known to come loose now and then. If you spot stains in your ceiling below your roof, but not too much, it is a sign that you could have minor flashing issues that need immediate roof repairs.
Cracked Tiles
The process for making tiles is rigid and has good quality control checks but you simply can never anticipate how long an individual tile will last. Sometimes lemons get through this quality control check and they will have internal vulnerabilities that cannot be tested for. On a roof with hundreds or even thousands of tiles, if a small fraction of them break then you still have a great completion rate but that tiny amount of failure still mean gaps in your defences. That is why you should always have yearly inspections of your roof by a qualified roof repair contractor, and even more frequently right after a new roof has been laid to pick out the weakest tiles that have already cracked and replace them.
Mortar Damage
Mortar is used in the pointing and bedding of your roof tiles and is generally shielded from most of the weather but will still come into contact with water occasionally. Mortar is not as weather-resistant as tiles are, so it will often peel away first. Since it is less visible and makes up less of your roof, it is hard to notice from the ground. Every ten years or so years you will need to schedule a full reporting to replace the crumbling mortar, but if you spot any issues before then, such as bits of mortar falling onto the ground below your roof, or leaks in your home, then you need to contact a roof repair contractor sooner rather than later.
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