How To Repair Area In Wind Damaged Shingled Roof

Maintaining a sound roof literally tops the listing of crucial home repairs: It keeps you lot and your family warm and dry out, along with everything in your firm. A new roof is a pricey proposition. These simple repairs tin go along your existing roof sound for years to come up.

How Often Should You Supplant Your Roof Shingles?

Whatsoever damage or signs of habiliment call for firsthand action to keep water from seeping nether the shingles and rotting the forest capsule beneath. Ignoring a problem—even what appears to be a small one—volition accelerate the need to reroof and can add hundreds of dollars to the cost of a new roof.

If your roof is more than 20 years old and nigh of the shingles are damaged or badly worn, information technology'south time to supercede information technology. Simply if your roof is basically sound and is at a relatively shallow pitch that y'all're comfortable working on, you can probably handle virtually repairs yourself.

Here, we'll take you through the 3 most-common ones: replacing asphalt shingles; gluing down a badly curled shingle; and repairing shingles that have cracked.

i. Replacing Roof Shingles

Person using a pry bar to remove damaged roof shingles. — 1. Slip a flat pry bar under the damaged shingle and printing down to pop out the covering nails.

If part of a shingle is missing, you'll have to supplant the whole thing. First see if you have any leftover shingles from the last time the roof was worked on (with whatever luck, the builder or the roofer who handled the job left some behind). If non, you lot'll have to purchase a parcel at a home center or lumberyard ($15 to $xx per square—100 sq. ft.—of standard iii-tab shingles). If you can't find a perfect friction match, choose the closest one.

Replacing a damaged shingle requires a hammer, a flat pry bar, a utility knife and a handful of 11/4-in. covering nails. Each shingle is initially secured with 4 nails; when the side by side shingle course above is installed, even so, its nails also pass through the peak edge of the shingles in the form below.

Begin removing the offset row of nails by sliding the pry bar nether the shingle immediately to a higher place the damaged one and gently lifting it to costless it from the sealer strip. You'll see the first row of nails beneath.

Skid the pry bar under the damaged shingle and pry upward. Once the boom pops up almost 1/4 in., remove the pry bar, press the shingle down and pull out the blast. Repeat this procedure for the remaining three nails. Then push the pry bar under the shingle direct in a higher place the damaged one and remove the second row of nails the same way. Later yanking all 8 nails, pull out the damaged shingle.

2. Fix Curled Roof Shingle Corners with Caulking

Person installing new roof shingles. — ii. Slide the new shingle up into place. Exist certain to align with the shingles of either side.

As cobblestone shingles become older, their corners often begin to roll downward or up. If you lot discover a shingle starting to curl, you tin forestall the inevitable curling by gluing down the curled section.

Utilize a caulking gun to employ a dab of roofing sealant (about $four per 10-oz. tube) nether the corner. Weigh it down with a brick (right); exit the weight in place for at least 24 hours until the sealant dries. That'south all there is to it.

3. Cracked Roof Shingles Repair

Person using a hammer to put new roof shingle into place. — 3. Carefully elevator the upper shingle and secure the new shingle with covering nails.

If a shingle is simply cracked or torn, you don't have to replace it—merely repair it. Showtime past applying a thick dewdrop of roofing sealant nether the crack. Press the shingle down and employ a 2nd bead of sealant on top of the crack. Then spread the sealant with a putty pocketknife.

The best part of this set is that no one has to know you fabricated it. Information technology's easy to camouflage: Cheque the gutter for an accumulation of colored granules that have washed downwards the roof from the shingles. Then gather some into a small cup and sprinkle them over the sealant to mask the repair.