Roof repair in Meaford

Meaford's older housing stock is substantially brick, and brick changes where a roof leaks. Everywhere the roof meets a masonry wall, there has to be a flashing detail that gets water out of the wall and onto the roof surface. Done properly that means counter-flashing let into a mortar joint. Done the cheap way it means a bead of caulk against the brick face, and caulk against brick has a life measured in a few years.

The other classic on brick homes is the parapet or gable wall that rises above the roof line. Water gets into the top of that masonry, travels down inside it, and emerges somewhere that looks nothing like the roof. We have chased a lot of Meaford leaks that turned out to be masonry taking on water rather than the roof failing at all, and we would rather tell you that than sell you shingles that will not fix it.

Eave details on these houses also tend to be tight. Shallow overhangs mean water coming off the roof lands close to the wall, and any eavestrough failure quickly becomes a wall and foundation problem rather than just a wet patch.

Properties along the Meaford shoreline take weather with a very long fetch behind it. Wind coming across the open bay from the north and west arrives with nothing to slow it, and in winter it arrives carrying moisture. The result is mechanical wind damage in the usual places plus accelerated wear on the exposed elevation.

On waterfront roofs we check the windward rake and the ridge first, because that is where failure starts, and we look at fastener patterns. A roof that was installed with four nails per shingle instead of six will show its limits here well before it does two concessions inland. If your roof is losing tabs on the water side only, that is what is usually going on.

Outside town, Meaford spreads into orchard and farm country with long driveways and buildings that see a roofer rarely. The practical issue is usually access and the fact that problems have been developing unobserved for a while. A leak into an unheated outbuilding does not announce itself the way one over a bedroom does.

Tree cover is the other rural factor. Orchard and bush properties drop a lot of organic material onto roofs, valleys and eavestroughs. Debris in a valley holds moisture against the shingles and shortens their life dramatically in that strip, and blocked eavestroughs in this climate mean ice at the eaves every February. A fair number of our Meaford repairs would not have been needed if the valleys had been cleared each autumn.