Roof repair in Knoxville

Signs you need a repair

• A ceiling stain that grows after a hard rain.
• A drip that shows up only when rain blows sideways.
• Shingles, or pieces of them, in the yard after a windy night.
• Nail heads pushing up through the shingles. Each one is a small hole waiting for water.
• A pile of granules at the bottom of one downspout.
• Water spilling over one corner of the gutter and soaking the wall below.

A small leak left for a season soaks the decking and the insulation, and that's when a cheap repair gets expensive.

Repair or replace?

A repair makes sense when the problem sits in one place and the rest of the roof is sound: shingles lie flat, the granules are still on, and the roof has good years left. Replacement makes sense when leaks keep turning up in other places, the shingles are curling or brittle across whole slopes, or you've paid for two repairs in a few years already.

When it's close, you'll get both prices in writing, the repair and the roof replacement, and the call is yours.

What we fix

• Pipe boots. The rubber collar around a plumbing vent cracks in the sun long before the shingles wear out. It's the leak we find most.
• Flashing. The metal where the roof meets a wall, a chimney or a skylight. When it pulls loose, or was caulked instead of tucked under the shingles, water runs behind it.
• Missing or creased shingles. Wind gets under the edges and the ridge first.
• Nail pops. The nail that backed out gets pulled, the hole sealed, and the shingle fastened down beside it.
• Valleys. Water runs hardest where two slopes meet, so worn shingles there go first.
• Vents. Cracked vent caps, and ridge vent lifted at the ends.

What goes into a repair

A repair uses the same materials a full roof gets, just less of them. Shingles are matched to the maker, line and color on your roof as closely as the supplier can match today. Ice and water shield goes under anything rebuilt at a valley, a wall or a pipe. A cracked boot gets replaced, not smeared over, and flashing goes back under the shingle above it, the way it was meant to sit.

A thick bead of roof cement over a problem is a patch. It dries out and cracks in a few summers, usually right before a storm. That's not what you're paying a roofer for.

What moves the price

• How many spots need work, and how far apart they are.
• How steep and high the roof is. Steep roofs take more safety gear and more time.
• Whether the wood under the leak has gone soft. Wet decking gets cut out and replaced.
• Matching. A color that's out of production can mean a wider repair, so the patch ends where the eye won't catch it.
• Flashing at a chimney or skylight, which takes more labor than a few shingles.

Your free inspection ends with a written price for the repair, one line for each part of it.

How long it takes

Most repairs are done in a single visit. Two things can hold one up: wet weather, and shingles in the right color. A common color can come straight from the supplier. An older one may need ordering, and in the meantime anything open gets covered so it can't leak.

Warranty on a repair

The shingles and boots we install carry their makers' warranties. A repair fixes the spot it touches. It doesn't reset the clock on the rest of an older roof, and a roofer who tells you it does is overselling. Ask for our written workmanship terms with your price.

See the work

Good flashing, boots and valleys look like nothing at all from the yard, which is the point. See finished roofs from our crews on the projects page, and read where roofs leak for the spots worth watching on your own house.