Roof problems
Missing and Wind-Damaged Shingles
A few tabs off the roof is a cheap fix. The same tabs left for a season are not.
Wind damage starts at the edges and the ridge. Shingles along the eaves and rakes take the uplift first, the adhesive strip lets go, and once one lifts the ones around it follow. On an older roof the seal has often already failed from heat, so a storm that would do nothing to a five-year-old roof strips a fifteen-year-old one.
Replacing a handful of shingles is one of the smaller jobs a roofer does. The catch is matching: shingle colours change over the years and a repair patch on a faded roof will show. That is a cosmetic problem, not a structural one, and a good contractor will tell you honestly whether the patch will be visible from the street.
The real decision is whether the shingle loss is a sign of the roof being at the end of its life. If the tabs that came off are brittle and the rest of the slope is losing granules, patching is buying a season. If the roof is otherwise sound, it is a quick repair and not worth agonising over.
What it looks like
- Shingles in the yard or the gutters after a windy night
- Tabs standing up or flapping in a breeze
- A row of shingles missing along an edge or ridge
- Exposed black underlayment or bare decking
Whatever the problem turns out to be, the first step is the same: describe it, say where the house is, and one independent roofing contractor working in your town contacts you to look at it. No charge for being connected, and no obligation once he has.
Where
Missing and Wind-Damaged Shingles across north Houston
Humble
Subdivisions from the seventies through the nineties under tall loblolly pine, which means twenty-year roofs under a constant rain of needles and the odd limb.
Kingwood
The Livable Forest. Mature trees on every lot, steep-pitched roofs from the eighties, and a lot of roofs replaced in the same two or three years after each big storm.
Porter
Montgomery County, fast-growing, with newer tract roofs next to older country houses and a lot of metal on outbuildings.
New Caney
Acreage, wooded lots and new construction along 59, where wind across open ground and pine limbs are the two things that take roofs apart.
Splendora
Small-town Montgomery County, rural lots, older houses, metal roofs on half the outbuildings and not many roofers based locally.
Crosby
East Harris County, open land and older subdivisions near the lake, with wind off the water and hail from the storms that follow the San Jacinto.
Dayton
Liberty County, country roofing: long driveways, metal on the shop, a shingle roof on the house, and the nearest big-town roofer a long drive away.
The Woodlands
Master-planned with covenants on what the roof can look like, large roofs under dense tree cover, and a replacement market dominated by hail claims.
Related
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Tell us what the roof is doing
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Roof problem in north Houston?
Tell us what is going on and where the house is. One independent roofing contractor working in your town contacts you directly. No obligation.
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