Roof Leak Repair

The stain on your ceiling is almost never under the hole.

Water gets in at a failed detail, runs sideways along the underside of the decking, follows a rafter until something interrupts it, and then drops. By the time it reaches your ceiling it can be fifteen feet from where it entered and on the other side of a wall.

This is why leak repair is a different job from roof repair. The repair itself is often small. Finding what to repair is the work.

Where Houston roofs actually leak

In rough order of how often we find them.

Pipe boots. The rubber collar around plumbing vents. Sun splits it, usually between years eight and twelve, and water runs straight down the pipe into the attic. Cheap to fix, expensive to ignore.
Wall and chimney flashing. Particularly where a lower roof meets a two-storey wall. Sealant smeared over a bad detail is extremely common and buys about two years.
Valleys. All the water on two planes goes through them.
Nail pops. A nail backs out over years of thermal movement, lifts the shingle above it, and creates a hole the size of a nail that lets in a surprising amount of water.
HVAC and exhaust penetrations, especially where a later trade cut a new hole and flashed it with mastic.
Skylights. Usually the flashing kit rather than the glass.
Low-slope sections. Porch and addition roofs shingled at a pitch too shallow for shingles, which is a design fault rather than a failure. These need a different system.

How we trace it

Start inside. The stain, its shape and how it changes tell us a lot. A ring that grows only in wind-driven rain points somewhere different from one that appears in every shower.
Go into the attic with a light. Water leaves a track. Staining on the deck underside and rust on the nail shanks mark the path back to the entry point far more reliably than guessing from the roof.
Work the roof from that evidence, not from a general look around.
Water test when we need to. A hose, run in sections, from the bottom of the suspected area upwards, with someone in the attic watching. It is slow and it is the only way to be certain on a stubborn leak.
Repair, then retest.

What to do while you wait. Put a container under the drip. If the ceiling is bulging with trapped water, put a bucket underneath and pierce the centre of the bulge with a screwdriver to let it drain in one place. It feels wrong and it saves the whole ceiling. Move what is under it, and photograph everything before you clean up, because that is your evidence if this becomes a claim.

The leak nobody finds

Sometimes the roof is not leaking at all. Condensation on uninsulated ductwork in a hot Houston attic drips onto the ceiling below and looks exactly like a roof leak, appears in summer rather than in rain, and no amount of roof work will fix it. So does a failed AC condensate pan, a slab-side plumbing leak in a wall, and wind-driven rain entering at a window head rather than the roof.

We check for those before we sell you a roof repair. A roofer who finds a roof leak every single time is not looking very hard.

What it costs, and how you can check

Every job on this page is priced Cost Plus. You see the supplier invoice for the materials, the crew hours at our published rate, the permit and disposal at what they actually cost, and one service fee of 20 to 30 percent set by job complexity and locked before anything starts. There is no second number and no change order conversation after the fact. The full breakdown is here.

Common Questions

Why is my ceiling stained when the roof looks fine from the ground?

Because water travels along the underside of the decking and down rafters before it drops. The entry point is often a small failed detail like a split pipe boot, which is invisible from the ground and sometimes invisible from the roof without looking for it.

Can you find a leak in the rain?

An active leak in the rain is actually the easiest one to find, because the water is showing us the path. If it is safe to get in the attic during the rain, call us then.

How much does leak repair cost?

The repair is usually small. The diagnosis is the variable, and a water test on a stubborn leak takes hours. We quote the trace and the repair separately so you can see which is which.

Will my insurance cover a leak?

Generally not one caused by age or wear, which is what most leaks are. Sudden damage from a storm event is a different question. We will document it either way so you can decide whether filing makes sense.

Get a Cost Plus quote for roof leak repair

Free inspection, photographed and written up, with a line-by-line quote inside one business day.

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Or call (281) 305-8669