Shingle Roof Leaks - 3 potential roof leak areas on your shingle roof

Inspecting your shingle roof can sometimes look and feel very intimedating. In this short shingle roofing article, I'll give you some useful tips to help you speed up the process of locating these common roof leak areas.

The Age Of Your Roof:

Knowing the age of your roof with help you determine a lot of things. Knowing whether or not your shingle roof installation was done properly or inproperly. A typical shingle roof installation shouldn't start breaking down for atleast 10 years or more. If your shingle roof is less than 5 years old and your starting to get leaks, I would contact the roofer who did the installation, or find a local roofing company in your area.

Chimneys

In most cases chimneys are the main culprit is most shingle roof leaks. Often times, it's the inproper installation of roof step flashing, roof chimney flashing, cracks in the bricks, mortar joints, etc.. The best way to determine if you have a leaky roof chimney is to climb up into your attic and inspect the roof sheathing surrounding the chimney. If your roof sheathing looks and appears wet, damaged or rotted, you might have a problem with your roof shingle flashing. If your brick feels damp or moist, you need to have your chimney repointed and sealed.

Roof Shingle Valleys

A roof shingle valley is where two roof planes interconnect with one another. Roof valleys are another major culprit to roof leaks, primarly cause this is where your roof is directing huge amounts of water to shed down your roof in a certian direction. With the stress of so much water leads to damaged roof shingles if not installed correctly to start with will cause roof leaks. Using the same tecniques used to determine a chimney leak, do the same to determine if you roof valley is leaking and call a local roofing company

Roof Ice dams

Depending on what part of the country your located in you might not even need to know about roof ice dams, but for the people living in the snow belt, this information can be useful to you.

Ice dams can be a big pain in the arse! Roof Ice dams typically happen when your roof doesn't get the proper ventalation it needs to breathe. Roof ice dams start to become visible when the outside air temperature in the winter fluctuates radically from a lower temperature to a higher temperature causing any snow on your roof to melt, freeze, melt and refreeze over and over. When that happens, ice begins to build and start moving up your roof and in most cases lifting your roof shingles up and finding a way to leak in.

Some ways to prevent this from happening is to have proper attic ventilation installed along your eaves, gable ends and your roof ridge.

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