Do You Have a Plan For a Roof Leak?

Roof leaks are serious business. Not only can they cause immense damage to you roof, but they can also damage your home, lead to mold, flooding, and extremely expensive repair bills. So when you discover signs of a leak forming in your roof, you need to take action quickly to minimize the effect of the leak and prevent as much damage to your home as possible. However, many people don’t actually have a plan in place for the event they discover a leak. While most people know what to do in the event of a blizzard, fire, broken pipe, or so much more, not being prepared for this kind of a disaster could prove costly.

If you’re one of the many people who doesn’t have a plan in place for the event you discover a roof leak, then this blog is for you. Here are a few things you should have in your plan when you discover a roof leak so that you can better protect your home from potentially serious damage.

Protect the Inside of Your Home

The first step to combatting roof leak damage is to get everything out of the way which could suffer from water intruding into your home. This means moving all furniture, computers, electronics, and other possessions away from where the water is getting in. This may be hard work, but you simply have to get it out of where the water may be getting in. If you need to, just move things a little bit for now and then more once you have the situation under a greater degree of control.

Find the Leak in Your Attic

Once you’ve taken care of any immediate damage or loss threats in your home, it’s time to look for where the water is coming in. Just because the leak is in one point in your home doesn’t mean that’s where the water is getting in—it’s not uncommon for the signs of water damage to your ceiling and the actual source of the roof leak to not directly align. Head up into your attic and find where you’ve noticed the water damage in your ceiling, then look at the wood in your roof and see if you can spot the source of the water. Generally, a good place to look is along seams between boards, and directly up the slope of your roof. After a quick search, you should be able to find the source of the leak and then take action.

Temporarily Seal the Leak

There are a few temporary repairs you can do which may help you keep the leak at bay. Roofing cement is one option, as is roofer’s tape. Both of these materials can seal the gap, prevent water from getting through, and minimize the damage to just one small, localized area that’s easier to fix. This also helps prevent water from leaking into your home down below. Alternatively, you may also wish to tarp off the area impacted by the water drip, and even keep a bowl or bucket handy in case water sneaks through again. Ideally this won’t happen, but you want to be prepared just in case.

You can also temporarily seal a leak from the outside using a tarp. However, you shouldn’t do this if the rain is still falling, if thunder and lightning are present, and if your roof surface is still wet. Walking on the surface of your roof is already immensely dangerous, and doing so in high-slip conditions increases the risk of an injury exponentially. However, if you have an opportunity to cover the leak spot with a tarp, be sure to pull it as tight as possible, seal the highest point of the tarp with roofer’s tape to prevent water from continuing to leak through, and weigh the tarp down with something fairly heavy to prevent it from blowing away.

Call for Help

Once you’ve got the leak under control and stopped for the time being, reach out to a professional and get your issue fixed as soon as possible. When you’ve got a roof leak, letting it sit unrepaired usually only allows the damage to grow and get worse, and that means an even more expensive repair, or worse, a total replacement of your roof that could have otherwise been prevented.