Repair or Replace? How to Decide About Your Roof

Nobody wants to replace a roof a year early, and nobody wants to spend money repairing one that fails the following winter. The decision is usually presented as a judgement call, but most of it comes down to four questions with fairly clear answers.

How old is it, really

Age alone does not decide anything, but it sets the context. An asphalt roof in the last few years of its expected life is a poor candidate for investment, because you are spending on something that is going to be removed shortly anyway.

If you do not know the age, look for the invoice, ask the previous owner, or check whether a permit was pulled. It is worth establishing before you spend anything.

Is the problem local or general?

This is the question that decides most cases.

Local problems are repairable. A single failed flashing, storm damage in one area, one section lifted by wind, a leak traceable to one penetration. The rest of the roof is doing its job. Fixing the one thing is the right answer.

General problems are not. Granule loss across the whole roof, curling across multiple slopes, several leaks in unrelated places, or a covering that has simply reached the end of its material life. Repairing one area of a roof in that condition just relocates the next failure.

A useful test: if you have already had two repairs in two different places in the last few years, you are on a replacement schedule and paying for it in instalments.

What is the deck doing?

The covering is replaceable and comparatively cheap. The structure under it is neither.

If water has been getting in for a while, the question stops being about the roof surface. Soft sheathing, staining on the underside of the deck, or a musty attic all mean the decision has been made for you, and delaying makes the eventual job bigger rather than smaller.

This is the one you cannot assess from the ground. It needs somebody in the attic with a torch.

How long are you staying?

A legitimate question, and worth being honest with yourself about.

If you are selling within a year, a sound repair that leaves the roof in genuinely good order is reasonable, and buyers ask for documentation. If you are staying for fifteen years, the calculation is completely different, and a repair on an aging roof is usually money you spend twice.

What is not reasonable is a cosmetic repair intended to get a roof past an inspection. Buyers get roofers up there.

When repair is genuinely the right answer

Plenty of the time. Storm damage on a young roof. A flashing detail that was wrong from the start. Something a previous contractor did badly that can be undone. A roof with real life left that needs one thing put right.

Highland repairs and maintains metal roofs, including ones we did not install. We would rather tell you a roof has years left than sell you a new one, partly because it is true more often than the industry admits and partly because people remember being told the truth.

Getting a straight answer

Ask the person assessing your roof to show you the problem, in a photograph if you cannot get up there, and to explain why they are recommending what they are recommending. Ask directly how long they think the roof has if you repair rather than replace.

Someone who will give you a number is thinking about your roof. Tell us what you have noticed and we will look at it properly.