Del River Roofing

Why roofs fail

Ask anyone who repairs roofs where they leak and the answer is the same: not in the middle, but wherever the roof meets something else.

An old roof rarely gives out in the field. It gives out at the joints and the edges. Six places a roof gives way. Five of them are transitions.
Garage Point 1 — ridge caps 1 Ridge caps — thin, exposed, first to lift Point 2 — the field of the roof 2 The field — slate or shingle, aging Point 3 — valleys 3 Leaf load mats where two slopes drain as one Point 4 — flashing 4 Flashing — old masonry, and the wall an attached house shares Point 5 — vent boot 5 Vent boot Point 6 — eaves and ice dams 6 Eaves — where the porch roof meets the wall

The six

What this region does to a roof

Slate laid a century ago, reaching the end of its life street by street. Porch roofs too shallow for the shingle someone put on them. Party walls where two houses share one flashing joint. Valleys buried under a mature canopy every autumn. Chimney counter-flashing caulked to old brick instead of cut into it. And attics that were never built to breathe. Most of what ends a roof here traces back to one of those.

Roofing across Greater Philadelphia →