Flat Roof Repair – Options, Costs and DIY Repair Guides

Part 2 of this Flat Roof Repair Guide: What to do when your flat roof starts to leak

Whether your roof just started leaking or the water has been coming in for some time now, we recommend that you take a hard look if you should repair or replace it!

For decades flat roofs in New England have been posing problems for home and building owners. Harsh climate, outdated roofing technology, and very often standing water, are the major factors affecting the lifetime and performance of flat roofs. The majority of these roofs were not designed to withstand leaks or to be properly repaired. The best you could do to repair a flat roof was to pour some tar on the leaky spot. In fact, tar was pretty much the only feasible option. Unfortunately, after a short period of time, you had to fix it again, as tar would dry up, crack and let the water in. New leaks would form elsewhere. As you see it is a constant repair cycle until a new leak begins and more money is spent.

When your roof starts leaking, repair is the first option that comes to mind. In this situation, you begin to think about the costs of repair, and ways to minimize them. Depending on the severity of the leak, this cost may be just a few hundred dollars, or a few thousand dollars. Here is why: when you begin to see a stained ceiling in your bedroom, it is the last stage of the leak. It means that your roof has been leaking for some time now and finally, after the last heavy rain, it showed up on that ceiling. It also means that the water had to completely soak the insulation, roof deck and rafters before you could see it on the ceiling. Therefore, if you choose the cheapest and most common solution, which is patching the flat roof, you will leave behind the moisture trapped under your roof. This will cause the rotting of your deck and rafters, since there is no way for that water to escape.

Such repairs are a perfect example of sunk costs which cannot be recovered, and the fix lasts only a short period of time. After a series of these repairs, the owner gets sick and tired of it, and gets a new roof. The homeowner may get a different type of a flat roof, which unfortunately would have the same inherited problems as the old one, but would carry a different name and would be made of different materials. This seems like a very sad situation for somebody with such a roof doesnt it?

As an alternative to repair, many homeowners consider building a pitched frame roof with asphalt shingles on top of their flat roof to stop the leaks. However, there are two problems involved here. First such an upgrade is very costly and you would still have to re-shingle your roof every 12 to 15 years. The second problem is more complex. Adding a sloped roof on top of a flat roof, might be a pretty straight-forward process if you have a small rectangular house. However, that is not always the case. Many homes have odd shapes, multiple levels and a mix of pitched and flat roofs. Now, if you have a 200 x 100 factory, that task becomes extremely difficult to implement, and I will not even try to guess the costs involved.

Repairing a flat roof in Massachusetts can and often will cost more than you anticipate (in other parts of the country, market conditions may be different, but the following prices should be just about right). Let us see what goes into the price of flat roof repair.

Above are your direct costs of a flat roof repair. Lets also consider the indirect costs, which most people do not pay attention to:

Cost of Your Time. When your roof starts leaking, you do not usually wait until the weekend to take care of it. You grab a phone book and start calling local roofers, or someone in the trade, whom you know already. You set up the earliest time for the roofer to look at your roof and to give you the price. You may get a few more people to look at your roof leak, but since it is more of an emergency, you need to fix it NOW. Therefore, you typically give the job to the first reasonable and seemingly professional bidder. Unfortunately, leaks usually start when it is least convenient during the week, at night, or when you are away. As a result, you have to take a day off at work to meet with the roofer, thus you have to use your sick or vacation day. If you make $20/hour, then you just lost $160.

Do the math. Let us be conservative and use the low numbers you are looking to spend at least $300+250+160 = $710 in direct and indirect sunk costs, which you cannot recover.

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Flat Roof Repair - Options, Costs and DIY Repair Guides