Hi, this is Steve from Roofer 911.
I'm on a roof in Chantilly, Virginia and the homeowner wanted me to do a roof inspection because he was afraid he may have some problems. Sure enough, he does.
Down at the bottom of the valley you can see there's two large holes. Okay, right there. Right down at the bottom, right over there. The reason why is when the contractors first install the vinyl siding they used pump jacks. Pump jacks are a long pole, usually made of aluminum, that are mounted on the ground and then they come up above roof level. Then the pole is braced into the roof.
Once the contractors are done with the vinyl siding, then it's time to take the pump jack poles off, and the brackets off. Then they pull the nails out that were holding the brace into place, but they never replaced the damaged shingles. This is a large hole that goes right through the plywood underneath and there is causing leakage inside the home, but the homeowner may not even know because the insulation inside the wall, or inside the attic is absorbing the water for now. What we need to do is replace these damaged shingles and then everything will be fine.
I wanted to show you a few other things. They have aluminum ridge vent. Before the ridge vent was installed they nailed the top course of shingles into place, but they placed the nails too low. You can see, like right here there's an exposed nail. When they were nailing the shingles, the nail guns are controlled by an air compressor. The air pressure to the guns was set too high, so the nails are over driven. With a heavy downpour the water's seeping right through the nails and then inside the house. You can see it's like this in many different areas right along the entire top ridge over here, too.
Another thing I noticed is they have solar energy fans and the flashing is all wide open. When there's a heavy downpour or a melting snow, the water can get underneath the flashing, then the water will seep right through the nails. Then the water will leak straight down into the attic but many times the water doesn't stop here. The water continues to travel down the roof underneath the shingles on top of the felt and it will settle at the valley.
The first thing the homeowner will do is if he notices a leak in the valley, he's going to call a contractor. The contractor's going to see the water damage inside the home and he's going to see that the valley is directly above. The first thing he's going to do is repair the valley which is expensive. He's not going to focus on repairing a problem up above. If the valley is taken care of and the attic fan is not, the leak will come right back again.
Also, this attic fan in the back is done exactly the same way. What we need to do is remove all the roof and completely around these two fans. We're going to seal the flashing and the wood deck underneath with ice and water shield and then we'll re-shingle it.
Back to this ridge vent. Being that they have all these nails exposed, what we're going to have to do is take off this entire length of ridge vent which is about forty feet. Once that's done, we're going to replace these shingles and nail high, then after the shingles are fastened, then we're going to seal the deck underneath the ridge vent heavy with polyurethane. Then the ridge vent is going to be pressed right into the sealant. Then when we fasten into place, we need to make sure that we hit the rafters underneath. Then we're going to reseal the fasteners. This homeowner, I can guarantee he has leaks but he just doesn't know it because like I said, the insulation below is absorbing the water.
Now another thing, when I was coming up the roof I noticed the lower roof had many nails that were exposed. Let's see if I can see it. Yeah. Okay. You can see right here there's a lot of nails that are going right through the face of the shingle. The reason why is they had some shingles that were missing and they replaced some of the shingles, but they did a very poor job. To make sure that the shingles don't blow off, they drove nails right through the face of the shingles, and that's going to end up causing a leak. Also, they have two shingles here that are buckled and they're probably not even fastened underneath, or the plywood underneath could be rotten. We need to repair this area.
Again, my name is Steve from Roofer 911. We specialize in roof repair in all areas of Chantilly, Virginia and all areas of northern Virginia. I can be reached at 703-475-2446. Thank you.
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