Your Roof: Repair or Replace?

Reading your roof from the ground

Twice a year — once each spring, and after any storm with real wind — stand in the yard with binoculars and look the roof over. Ten minutes, no ladder. You're looking for:

• Lifted, missing, or curling shingles. Wind starts at the edges and works inward. A few dark patches where tabs are gone means repair now, before water finds the layer underneath.
• Granule piles. Check the gutters when you clean them and look at the splash zone below downspouts. Shingles shed their mineral coat as they age; heavy shedding means the roof is spending down its protection.
• Sagging lines. The ridge and the roof planes should read straight. A dip or a wave points at the structure or sheathing underneath — that's a pro conversation, not a shingle patch.
• Moss on the shady faces. Common on north-facing slopes in damp Pittsburgh air. Moss holds water against the shingles. Don't power-wash it off — that strips granules and ages the roof faster.
• Flashing at chimneys, valleys, and walls. This is where most leaks actually start — not out in the field of shingles. Rusted, lifted, or tarred-over flashing is the most common "new roof" that's really a modest repair.

One rule with no exceptions: never walk your own roof. Pitch, wet algae, and ladders hurt people every year, including people who were sure they'd be fine. Binoculars from the ground, a pro on the shingles. These checks slot into the season-by-season rhythm in our maintenance calendar.

The evidence inside the house

• Check the attic after wind-driven rain. Go up with the flashlight off first: daylight showing around pipes, vents, or the chimney is a hole. Then turn it on and look for damp sheathing, stained rafters, or wet insulation below the penetrations.
• A ceiling stain is a message from uphill. Water travels along rafters and framing before it drops, so the stain is rarely under the actual hole. Trace uphill — toward the ridge, valleys, and anything that pokes through the roof — before assuming the leak is overhead.

Repair or replace, honestly

• Age sets the frame. Asphalt shingles commonly run 15–25 years depending on shingle quality, installation, and attic ventilation — your closing paperwork or a neighbor's re-roof date (houses built together age together) tells you roughly where you are.
• One localized problem on a roof with years left is a repair. Flashing, a wind-stripped patch, a cracked vent boot — fix it and move on.
• Widespread signals mean start planning. Granule loss across whole planes, shingles that crack when lifted, leaks showing up in more than one spot. Get quotes on your schedule — a planned replacement in decent weather costs less and goes better than an emergency one in November with tarps flapping.
• A second layer over old shingles is usually a false economy. Most roofers advise against it: it hides the deck's condition, and you pay for a double tear-off eventually. If a bid leans on a layover to hit a price, ask hard questions.

Ventilation and ice dams: the roof problem that's an insulation problem

If your shingles age fast or you grow ropes of icicles every winter, the roof itself may not be the culprit. Blocked soffit vents and a thin attic floor cook shingles from below in summer, and in winter they melt roof snow that refreezes into dams at the cold eaves. Before paying for a roof fix, have someone look at attic insulation and airflow — sometimes the roof gets a reprieve once the attic is right.

Picking a roofer

Everything in our hiring a contractor guide applies here, and applies double after a storm, when the door-knockers arrive. Two roof-specific additions: get the flashing detail in writing — what's being replaced versus reused at the chimney, valleys, and walls — because flashing is where cheap jobs cut, and it's where the next leak starts. And references from re-roofs a few years old beat references from last month; any roof looks good the week it's finished.

Full disclosure: our sister company Integrated Contracting & Renovations does exterior and renovation work around Pittsburgh — but any registered, insured roofer should welcome these questions. The ones who bristle at them are telling you something.