Hi, this is Steve. I'm Roofer911.
I'm on a roof in Reston, Virginia, and they have a few different leaks on this roof. I'll show you one. The ridge vent here is all damaged, and people been walking, stepping all over it. You can see that there's a lot of nails that are exposed. Even though they sealed it with cement, this ridge vent is still going to leak. Right here, you got a nail pop.
What we need to do is, we're going to take this ridge vent off. We're going to install a new course of shingles. Then we're going to seal the deck heavy with polyurethane on both sides. The new ridge vent is going to be pressed right into the sealant, and make sure that we fasten it into the rafters.
Also, they have a leak around the chimney on the front side. The reason why, there's nails in the flashing right up along the wall. We're going to take up the shingles around this chimney. We'll install new step flashing, and re-shingle this area. This ridge vent here is not leaking, but I would highly recommend to replace this one too, because it's all damaged.
I want to show you something. Up against the wall, the contractors nailed the shingles too close to the wall. By doing that, they damaged the step flashing underneath. The leak starts about right here, and it goes all the way down. When I did the infrared scan inside the home, I could see it was very obvious that there's a roofing issue going on. What we'll do is we're going to replace any damaged step flashing, and then re-shingle this area.
One thing very important, even after the roof is repaired, this home will still leak if one thing is not taken care of, and I'll show you what I mean. Here they have vinyl siding. Vinyl siding, it must be installed correctly the first time, because if it's not, then a lot of times water's going to get in through the siding at the seams. Then the water will travel behind the wall, and leak on the roof. The contractors are not going to think about the siding overall. They're going to think, "Well, being that the leak is underneath the roof, it must be the roof."
I want to show you something, and I see this quite often. You see this open space right here, underneath the seam? That space is about one inch wide. It tells me that this panel here is overlapping this one by about an inch and a half. That's good. If there's a driving rain, no water's going to get inside here. That's good.
Take a look at this one. You can see the space is much wider, it's about two inches wide. Take a look. When I open it up, there's only about a quarter of an inch overlap. Instead of taking all of the siding off and redoing everything, what we'll do is we'll pull back the seam, insert polyurethane from top to bottom, and then we'll press it into place. This way, no water gets inside.
I noticed, also, they have Tyvek installed behind this wall, which is very very good. If there's any tears in the Tyvek, when the water's traveling down inside the wall, the water will seep right through the tear, and then down underneath the roof.
Another thing is, like I said, you have aluminum step flashing that goes underneath the roof, and then it goes behind the siding. If the Tyvek behind the siding is not overlapping the step flashing, the water will get in behind the step flashing and leak underneath the roof. It's very important, the Tyvek has to overlap the step flashing, instead of going behind.
That's it. My name is Steve, again from Roofer 911. I can be reached at 703-475-2446. Thank you.
Roofer911 provides professional roof repair services in Reston VA, and all areas of Virginia.
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