Repair or Replace? How to Tell

It is the question everybody asks first, and the honest answer is that nobody can give it to you over the phone. But there are three things that decide it, and knowing them means you can tell whether the answer you are being given is a real one.

The first is age. Asphalt shingles in this climate generally give you twenty to twenty-five years, and less on a shaded north slope where moss has been working away. A roof that is fifteen years old with one failed pipe boot is a repair. A roof that is twenty-four years old with the same failed pipe boot is a roof that is going to keep asking for repairs.

The second is the deck underneath, and it is the one people forget. Shingles are a covering; the plywood or board sheathing beneath them is the structure. If water has been getting in long enough to soften the deck, new shingles over the top solve nothing — you have spent the money and the problem is still under there. Anyone quoting a re-cover without having looked at the deck is guessing.

The third is how many places are failing at once. One lifted section after a windstorm is damage. Curling edges across a whole slope, granules filling the gutters, and three separate leaks in three separate places are not damage — that is the covering reaching the end of its service life, and repairing it one spot at a time gets expensive faster than people expect.

There is a fourth, quieter factor: how long you plan to be in the house. A repair that buys three good years is a perfectly sensible decision if you are selling in two, and a poor one if you are staying for fifteen.

What you should expect from anyone looking at your roof is that they get on it, get into the attic if they can, and show you photographs of what they found. If a repair will do, they should tell you a repair will do.