Thinking you have a roof leak can be stressful, and they can lead to a lot of problems if not fixed in a timely manner.
Here are some tips on how you can find out where there are leaks in your roof.
What are the signs that your roof is leaking?
So, what are the first signs of a roof leak? Here are some of the most important things to be on the lookout for.
Water stains on your ceilings, bubbles in your interior walls, maybe a musty smell in a particular room, or if you're walking up to your house and you notice missing or damaged shingles on top of the roof.
Check the attic
If you have noticed any of these signs I just mentioned, the first thing you may want to do is hop up into the attic with a flashlight. When you're in the attic, what you'll do is you'll try and locate the staining on the drywall from above where the leak is in whichever room it may be in. After that, you'll look up at your decking and see if you can't find any damp spots, any rotten wood, rotten decking, or any sort of mold.
Do a water test
Sometimes in those hard to find leaks, what you're going to want to do is what's called a water test. A water test is usually done with two people. You'll have somebody on the outside of the roof either spraying a water hose where they think the leak may be or just a water jug, or spraying the water on top of where they think the leak is.
The other person will be inside trying to locate the water or see where the water is seeping through. If you're using a garden hose, what you're going to want to do is work slowly saturating the shingles that you think the leaks may be.
Common Repairs
Now I'm going to list some common repairs. If you're handy, these might be some things that you're able to do yourself, first being pipe boots. Pipe boots are usually the first things to go on a roof. What you'll need is what you'll need to do is remove the shingles around the surrounding pipe boot.
All you'll have to do is slide that pipe boot off, replace it with the new pipe boot. What we like to do is do a layer of ice and water shield around that pipe boot just to prevent any future leaks, and then you'll reinstall the new shingles around it. One of the next most common sources of leaks that we find are just nail pops. It's where the nails start to back out. It's usually caused by not having enough ventilation in the roof.
There's two ways to fix it. You can either replace the whole shingle, or you can get a new nail, pop it back in the hole, and then just put some ceiling caulk on top. The other is just your standard shingle replacement. But if you see a missing shingle, what you'll have to do is you'll actually have to remove the two shingles above the shingle you're trying to replace, install the new shingle where the missing shingle was, and then reinstall the two shingles that you had to take out.
And then the last is just to seal all your roof extremities, and you can usually find some caulk at Home Depot and do that yourself.
Call an Expert
When in doubt, call a roof contractor it's always a good idea to call a professional roofing contractor when your roof is leaking. They can diagnose any and all underlying problems and fix the leak properly.