Anyone who has a house has a roof. Roofs provide shelter, insulation as well as drainage for all the water and snow falling on your house. That’s why, ensuring you have a fully functioning roof is so vital. However, roofs come in all sorts of shapes and sizes as well as types, each requiring a different method of repair. If you’re stuck with a leaky roof and don’t know where to turn, this article should help you.
Roofs with shingles
This is the most common type of roof you’ll find up and down the country. They are also relatively straight forward to fix. They consist of shingles arranged together that cover the whole surface area of the roof. Fixing a damaged roof is usually a case of just replacing a damaged shingle.
Inspect the joints where the shingles meet, this is usually the weak point. Broken shingles and loose shingles should also be easy to spot on inspection. Once you have found the problem you can begin either reattaching the loose shingles or inserting new ones. Replacing the shingles is straight forward. Simply remove the old one by prying open the nails and carefully sliding them out. Be carefully though, because they could be very brittle.
Repairing flat roofs
When undertaking flat roof repairs in Harlow, you need to be aware of a unique range of problems not found with other roofing styles. However, as with any roof, the first step to fixing a leaking roof is to find the source of the problem. Unlike shingle roofs, flat roofs are built up of lairs of roofing fabric with tar to make them waterproof. Most often leaks occur where the felt has been damaged.
Once you’ve located the damage, clean the entire surface of the roof area, which includes drying up any pools of water that have gathered on the roof. After you’ve done this cut through the part of the roof that is damaged with a sharp knife but don’t go all the way through to the layer beneath. Lift this layer up and clean the area, mopping up all traces of water. Now add roof cement to the layer you’ve just cut and press it down firmly. Fix it down with 6d galvanised nails along the edges of the slit and then brush the area with roof cement.
Wooden shake roof repair
These types of roofs are less common so if you’re doing roof repairs in Harlow, you’re unlikely to encounter this problem. However, in case you do, remember, repairing a wooden shake roof is similar to repairing a roof with shingles. It can, though, be just that little bit trickier. The damaged shake requires a hammer and chisel to remove and once you’ve inserted a new shake, you will need a caulking compound to seal it.
