Roof Repairs

Do you have those nasty three tab shingles that keep breaking and blowing off your roof? These have to be absolutely the worst shingle ever invented. I currently have them on my roof also. They came with the house when we had it built. The house is 12 years old and I have replaced shingles in various spots four times. Thank goodness, our insurance is replacing our roof and our roofer is eating the deductible.

Anyway, having shingles on your roof is pretty important, so if you are not going to replace your roof you should repair it. You could ask a roofing contractor to come out and give you an estimate, but most likely he won't do it because the job is not big enough. At least that's the story I got. They deal in replacing entire roofs. So you may be faced repairing the roof yourself. And, actually, these repairs are quite easy to make.

You can still get 25 year three tab shingles in most colors, or a color pretty close to that on your roof. You won't get it at Home Depot or Lowes, you will have to go to an actual roofing supplier.

Tools you will need for the repair are a 12" carpenter's flat bar, a utility knife, a hammer, a caulking gun, a tube of Henry roof patch, and 1.5" roofing nails.

Locate the broken or missing shingle and find both side edges where the shingle is or should be. Loosen the shingles with your flat bar by sliding it under the broken shingle to break the tar seal and gently lift the shingle. Then loosen the shingles above it in the same fashion. Use the flat bar to pop all roofing nails fastening it to the roof. Remove the nails and slide the shingle out. Insert a new shingle where the old one was removed and nail it into place. Come on, you gotta use more than 2 nails, I suggest 6. Then lift all loose shingle tabs and run a bead of Henry roof patch at the bottom edge of all loose tabs and press down. Presto! You just repaired your own roof. Don't fall off the ladder while patting yourself on the back! Go get a cup of Starbucks to reward yourself. You just saved hundreds of dollars.

If you have any home repair questions you can submit them in the comments box below.

Thanks for reading.