Your lawn and garden need regular care and maintenance to grow and look attractive. How about your roof? Many homeowners wait for little problems to pop up before paying attention to what is happening over their heads. If neglected, these little problems can quickly become large and costly issues. Here are four things you can do proactively to look after your roof and make sure that little problems don’t end up being big problems.
Roofing Tips
Have your roof inspected twice a year.
Once in the spring before the summer storms arrive and once in the fall before the snow flies. This will help you spot any deficiencies or damage that may have occurred out of sight from the ground, and give you a chance to have them repaired before something more significant happens. The inspector will also be able to clean any loose debris off of your roof while performing the estimate.
Regularly clean out debris from your eavestroughs.
Over the course of a year, debris from trees and garbage can fall or be blown onto your roof and into your eaves troughs. Over time, this debris can not only clog up your drain pipes, it can also weigh down the troughs, causing them to separate from the roof edge. Read our post about Eavestroughing care and maintenance here.
Have damaged shingles replaced as soon as possible.
After very windy days, you may notice one or more shingles lying on the ground, or lifted or missing from your roof. Or, if you’ve had a roof estimate recently, the inspector may also inform you of missing or damaged shingles. If those open areas are not fixed as soon as possible, you risk water leakage into the house, as well as rotting roof decking over time.
Try to avoid walking on your roof as much as possible.
The more traffic that occurs on a roof, the quicker the roof system can wear out. For shingles, foot traffic removes some of the protective granules. It is also possible to crack a shingle, or trip on one, causing it to break off. For wood shakes or concrete tile, foot traffic can also crack the pieces, creating holes. And for metal, it is possible to take a wrong step and bend a metal shingle or panel.
