What you are paying for
The invoice for a leak repair is mostly time, and most of that time goes on finding the thing to fix. The fixing itself is often half an hour of work on a detail the size of a dinner plate. That balance surprises owners, and it is worth being clear about before the job starts, because a quote that is nearly all labor with a small line for materials looks wrong until you know what the labor bought.
What you receive at the end is the repair and the reason for it. The reason is the part with value next year. A pipe boot that split because it was the original one on a roof that has been recoated twice tells you where the other boots are in their life. A puncture beside a rooftop unit tells you the technicians servicing it have no walkway and will do it again in the spring. We write that down and hand it over.
What we do not do
We do not seal over a detail without opening it. Sealant laid on top of a failed lap looks like a repair on handover day and is a repair that comes back. We do not patch above a stain simply because the stain is there, and we will say so plainly if that is what someone else has quoted you for.
We do not call an emergency patch a permanent repair. Cold and wet stop most membranes and adhesives bonding, so work done in a storm is a hold. It is priced as a hold, described as a hold on the paperwork, and the return visit is agreed at the time rather than left as a promise. What that first night should and should not include is set out on our emergency leak repair page.
We do not patch over wet insulation. It does not dry out under a membrane, it spreads sideways, and the repair fails from below. Where the board is wet it comes out. If the wet area turns out to be large, we will tell you that a leak repair is no longer the right conversation and what the alternatives are.
When people call
Usually once water has already arrived: a stain on a ceiling tile, an email from a tenant, a bucket in a warehouse aisle. Sometimes after a storm, when nothing is leaking yet but something up there has visibly moved. Occasionally before a sale or a refinance, when a known leak has to be closed out with paperwork behind it.
The expensive version is the leak that dripped quietly into a roof void for a season. Nobody saw it, the insulation soaked, and the repair now includes cutting out material nobody knew was wet. If there is a stain you have been walking past, that is the one to call about.
Common questions
Can you stop the leak on the first visit?
Often yes, in the sense that the water stops coming into the building. Whether that is the permanent repair depends on the weather and on what we find when we open the detail.
- Membranes and adhesives need a dry, reasonably warm surface to bond
- A repair made in rain or in cold usually will not hold
- Where that is so, we price temporary work as temporary and agree the return
- Scale can also stop it: wet insulation over a wide area is not a patch
Cutting out saturated board takes materials and time that may not be on the van, and closing the roof properly matters more than closing it today. We make the area watertight, photograph what we found, and come back with a quote rather than sealing over it.
How do you find where the water is getting in?
By working backwards from the evidence rather than forwards from a guess. The stain marks the lowest opening in the deck, not the hole in the roof.
- Water arrives on top of the deck and travels before it drops through
- The first job is to establish which way the deck runs and the roof falls
- Then we look at the details upslope: curbs, pipes, drains, wall junctions and laps
- Most leaks start where the membrane was cut, turned up or sealed by hand
Where several candidates look plausible we test them rather than argue about them, usually water testing one detail at a time in sequence. If the interior is accessible, looking at the underside of the deck during rain narrows the search quickly and saves time on the roof.
What is a water test, and will it make things worse?
A water test is a controlled flood of one part of the roof at a time, starting at the lowest suspect detail and working up, with somebody inside watching for the drip.
- It is slow and deliberate on purpose
- Flooding the whole roof tells you nothing about which detail let water through
- The volume used is small next to a heavy rain, and the roof already leaks
- We protect the interior first and agree cover where stock or equipment is at risk
We will not water test in freezing weather, where the water can ice and create a hazard, or where standing water would sit on a section we already suspect is structurally weak. The search is then done by inspection and elimination instead.
Does the ceiling have to be opened up?
Not always, but it helps more than people expect and it is usually the cheapest hour of the job.
- The underside of the deck shows the path the water is taking
- A wet run along a flute or a dark line at a joint gives direction
- A direction cuts the search on the roof from hours to minutes
- It also shows how far the water has spread, which you need to know anyway
Where the ceiling is fixed plasterboard rather than a tile grid, opening it is a bigger decision and we will discuss it rather than assume. If we do open it, we say beforehand who makes it good, because a leak repair contract does not automatically include ceiling work.
The leak stopped on its own. Is it still worth a visit?
Yes, and a leak that has stopped is usually more urgent than it feels. Leaks that come and go are not small leaks, they need a particular condition to show themselves.
- Rain from one direction, a certain intensity, or water backing up above a flashing
- The defect is there the whole time
- Water still soaks the insulation on the days the condition is met
- A dry roof is far easier to repair than a wet one
Membrane bonds to a clean dry surface, wet board can be removed before it spreads further, and the work can be scheduled rather than done as an emergency in bad weather. Tell us what the weather was doing each time it leaked, because that pattern shortens the search.