Two Years of Patch Repairs Before the Porch Roof Was Finally Replaced

The Six Month Illusion

A repaired roof that stays dry for six months has not necessarily been fixed. It has been dry for six months. Ohio gives a roof a specific set of tests through the year and a repair only proves itself once it has seen all of them: a driving spring rain that pushes water sideways, a summer downpour heavy enough to overwhelm a valley, and a freeze thaw cycle that lifts and drops everything.

The four inch rain is what exposed this one. Volume that high stops behaving like normal rain. It backs up at any restriction, and it finds the same fault a light rain runs straight past.

When Repair Stops Being the Right Answer

We are comfortable telling people it is not time yet, and on a roof with real service life left and a single failed detail, a repair is the honest call. This was not that. Two separate leak points appearing in one storm, after two years of attempts, is a roof telling you the problem is the system rather than a spot.

The practical test we use: if the same area has been repaired twice and failed twice, stop paying for the third attempt. The money spent on repeat repairs is money that does not come off the price of the replacement you end up buying anyway.

The Aluminum Nail Problem

This roof was an aluminum shingle roof fastened with aluminum nails, and that detail changes the whole cleanup. Roofing crews sweep a property with rolling magnets at the end of a tear off, and it works because roofing nails are steel. Aluminum nails are not magnetic, so the magnet passes straight over them.

The only way to clean up an aluminum nail tear off properly is by hand, across the driveway, the yard, the flowerbeds and the patio. It takes longer and there is no shortcut. If you have an aluminum shingle or aluminum nailed roof coming off, ask the contractor how they intend to handle cleanup before you sign, because a crew that plans to run a magnet over it has not understood the job.

Documentation Through the Job

We took drone photographs through the process and gave them to the homeowner, and we came back the day after completion for another site check. On a roof that has already failed repeatedly, that record matters more than usual, because it is the thing that tells you what is actually up there this time.

In Their Own Words

Posted publicly on Google by Eric Wright, quoted here as written and trimmed only for length.

Spent 2 years working with another company when our porch roof started to leak after a second renovation. I won’t mention their name because in all fairness they only worked at repairing our roof, not replacing it. We actually thought they had it fixed, no leaks in over 6 months. Then a 4”+ rain had not only our porch, but our dining room leaking too. We decided it was time to replace, no more bandaid fixes. … We had an aluminum shingle roof with aluminum nails(magnets don’t work) to tear off. They walked and picked up it all. Driveway, yard, flowerbeds, patio. Our roof looks great, no more leaks. … He also provided drone pictures that he had taken through out the process, a nice touch.

Where to Go From Here

If this is close to your situation, our roof replacement page covers how we handle the work itself. If it is not quite yours, the closest one we have written up is a stranger who knocked to say shingles were missing.