A brown ring on the hall ceiling that gets a little wider every time it rains.
Roof repair in this town usually announces itself about ten minutes after you sit down with a plate from Wintzell's and the drip starts finding the drywall.
We come at it the same way we come at siding: get up there, find the one thing that actually failed, and fix that thing. Three lifted shingles and a split pipe boot is a Tuesday morning, not a reason to talk you into a roof replacement. What I refuse to do is tar over a soft deck and call it repaired, because that patch holds until the next squall and then costs you sheathing too.
If you truly need a new roof, you will hear it from me with photos to back it up.
Below is the leak work, storm damage roof repair, hail, flat and tin roofs, what moves the price, and the questions that come up before anybody books. Call (251) 551-3653 and we will come look at it.
Roof Leak Repair
Water is a liar. The stain on your ceiling above the hallway is almost never directly under the hole, because water rides the top of a rafter eight or ten feet before it drops. So roof leak repair starts with tracing, not tearing. We pull shingles back around the suspect area, check the nail pops, the valley metal, the pipe boots that go brittle after about ten Mobile summers, and the step flashing where a dormer meets the field.
Kick-out flashing is the one everybody skips. Without it, every August downpour dumps roof water straight behind the wall. We handle siding installation in Mobile as well, so we see what that does to sheathing, and it isn't pretty.
Most repairs like this take a morning. The rot underneath is what stretches it.
Roof Replacement
A roof replacement beats another patch when you're on your fourth round of roof repair in two summers, the deck feels spongy underfoot, or a third of the slope has gone bare. Past that point, more roof repair cost is rent, not ownership.
Here's how it goes. Old layers come off down to the decking, soft plywood gets cut out and swapped before anything new touches it, then drip edge, synthetic underlayment, starter strip, and shingles nailed six per instead of four, because coastal wind finds the four-nail roofs first. Two to three days on most houses, longer with a steep pitch or a mess of valleys.
Square footage, pitch, how many layers come off, and how much rotten deck turns up once we're down to it are what move the price.
Plenty of folks add siding installation in Mobile while the ladders are already up. Any roof replacement contractor worth calling cares more about the decking than the shingle color.
Urgent Roof Repairs
Urgent doesn't always mean midnight. Plenty of the urgent roof repairs I get called out on start as a brown ring on a bedroom ceiling after a June downpour, and by the time that ring doubles in size, the decking above it has gone soft.
First thing we do is dry it in: tarp screwed down through battens, not weighted with cinder blocks that walk off in the next gust coming off the Bay. Then we open the area up and find the real entry point, usually a popped nail, a cracked pipe boot, or a valley that's been shedding granules for years. Ice and water shield goes down before any shingle does.
Skip that step and water tracks sideways along a rafter and surfaces ten feet from where it got in.
Emergency Roof Repair
Emergency roof repair is about the next twenty four hours, not the next twenty years. When a squall line comes through and a limb opens up your decking, the first job is keeping water out of the ceiling, and that means a reinforced tarp screwed to furring strips and run over the ridge, not a blue poly sheet held down with cinder blocks.
Tarps done the lazy way tear loose in the next gust and leave you with more nail holes than you started with.
We work nine to five Monday through Friday, and when a roof genuinely can't wait, we'll come out on a Saturday.
Pitch, height and how much area needs covering are what move a temporary repair either way. And since siding installation in Mobile is our everyday work, we'll tell you what the walls took too.
Flat Roof Repair
Flat roofs don't leak because they're flat. They leak because water sat there for three days after a Gulf downpour and found the one lap seam somebody rolled cold instead of welding.
Most of what I patch around downtown is modified bitumen and TPO, and the failure points are boring and predictable: open seams, cracked pipe boots, flashing at the parapet, and scuppers packed with live oak leaves. If water is still standing 48 hours after the rain quits, you've got a drainage problem, not just a membrane problem, and patching over it buys you one season.
Good roof repair means cutting out the wet insulation underneath, drying the deck, then welding new membrane in.
Where a low slope ties into a wall, the wall covering matters too, and since we handle siding installation in Mobile, we close both sides of that joint properly.
Tin Roof Repair
Most of the tin around here is exposed fastener, 5V crimp or corrugated, and it almost never leaks through the metal itself. It leaks at the screws. Those neoprene washers bake in the Gulf sun, shrink, and back out over ten or fifteen years, and then every fastener is a straw.
The fix is usually oversized gasket screws set into fresh holes, butyl tape at the laps, and new closure strips at the ridge, not a bucket of black roof cement smeared over everything. That stuff traps water against the panel and rusts it from underneath.
We walk purlins, not the flat of the pan, so you don't get a dented roof out of a roof leak repair.
Same crew that does siding installation in Mobile handles the trim and flashing, so profiles actually match.
What the job involves
Every roof repair I do starts in the attic, not on the ladder. Daylight through the decking, rusty nail tips, a dark stain on a rafter, that tells me more than ten minutes of walking the shingles ever will. Then we go up top, pull back the damaged field, check the decking underneath, and replace anything soft before new underlayment and shingles go down. Flashing gets replaced, not caulked over.
Caulk is a two year fix pretending to be a ten year one.
Most repairs we run here take half a day to a full day. Pitch, access, how much plywood is rotted, and whether the chimney or a valley is involved are what move the roof repair cost.
I came up doing siding installation in Mobile, so the wall-to-roof step flashing and kickouts get done right.
What it costs
Honest answer: I can't price a roof repair from a keyboard, and anybody who does is guessing with your money. What moves the number is how big the wet area is, whether we're talking one cracked pipe boot or twelve feet of soft decking under a valley, how steep the pitch is, and whether the shingle color you bought years ago is still made.
A roof leak repair cost on a single flashing detail looks nothing like a new roof cost after an August squall off the bay lifts a whole slope and you're into roof replacement instead.
Want a real figure for your house? Call the office, (251) 551-3653, and I'll get up there and measure it.
Same visit for the walls, since siding installation in Mobile runs around $3.43 a square foot for mid-grade vinyl, and wind damage rarely stops at the roofline.
When roof repair is the wrong fix
Sometimes roof repair is the wrong call, and I will say so from the ladder rather than sell you a patch. If the tar shingles across a slope are curled, brittle and dumping granules into your gutters, a repair buys you a season and then you pay again. The new roof cost stings once. Patching a dying slope stings every year.
Second one: that ceiling stain is not always coming from above. Water gets behind a wall and travels, and what you want is siding repair, or on an older house a few rotten boards of wood siding pulled and the flashing put back right.
Third, a low-slope roof over a shop that holds water after a downpour is commercial roofing work, a coating or a whole section, not a bucket of mastic and good intentions.
Why choose us for this
You've got a stain spreading across the ceiling and a bucket under it, and a week of calling around about roof repair is nobody's idea of fun. What you want is one visit, one fix, and no reason to look up at that ceiling again for years.
So, a fact about the work instead of a promise about me: I don't smear sealant over a lifted step flashing and call it repaired. Caulk on a bad flashing joint buys you a few dry months, then the water shows up two feet over, where you can't see it. I lift the shingles, replace the metal, reset the courses.
There will be a cheaper number than mine. Cheap storm damage roof repair skips the underlayment around the penetrations, which is exactly what holds when a squall parks over Tillman's Corner. Plenty of roof repair companies quote from the driveway. I get up there. The estimate costs nothing and commits you to nothing.
Frequently asked questions
Can I repair just one section, or do I need a whole roof replacement?
If the decking is sound and the damage is under about a third of the slope, a repair holds. Once shingles are 18 to 20 years old and the granules are washing into your gutters after every August thunderstorm, patching a leaking roof just moves the problem three feet over.
Will the work tear up my siding or gutters?
It shouldn't. We ladder off standoffs, tarp the walls, and pull nails rather than pry them. If a course of siding gets dinged during storm damage roof repair, we replace it, since we do siding installation in Mobile too.
How do we get started?
Call us at (251) 551-3653. We'll get on the roof, photograph what we find, and walk the shingles with you before anything gets torn off.
Contact Mobile Siding Pros now
Contact us now, while the wet spot is still the size of a dinner plate. A leaking roof doesn't hold steady on you; the felt stays soaked, the decking goes spongy, and a half hour of patching turns into cutting out sheets of plywood.
Call me at (251) 551-3653 and tell me what's up there, shingles, a low-slope porch membrane, or an old run of barn tin, because flat roof repair and tin roof repair need different material on the truck than a shingle patch does. Somebody's here weekdays, nine to five, and when wind has peeled panels loose off a house near Cottage Hill Road, that jumps ahead of everything else on the board.
Roofing hail damage, storm damage restoration, plain old drips: leave a message if we're on a roof and we'll ring you back.