Roof Leak Repair in San Antonio, TX

On a 15-year-old roof in San Antonio, the shingles are usually fine. The metal is the problem. Where the roof meets a chimney, a sidewall or a valley, sealant dries out over our summers, step flashing pulls away from the brick, and the first hard rain finds the gap. So when we show up for a roof leak repair, flashing is the first thing we suspect.

Pipe boots come next. Those rubber collars around the plumbing vents crack after eight to ten years of Texas sun, and water rides straight down the pipe into the attic. You notice a stain near the bathroom and figure the shingles went. They didn't. Flashing and boots together account for roughly two out of every three leak calls we run in Bexar County.

Old houses have it worse. Pre-1980 homes on the South Side, in Monte Vista and around King William are carrying decades of patches on patches, brittle flashing and layers of old roofing, and they leak all year, storm or no storm. A lot of them are also in historic districts, where the Office of Historic Preservation reviews visible roofing changes. One more reason a clean repair beats a messy re-roof. It's also why we treat roof flashing repair as its own trade, and why a leak call often grows into a small decking replacement once we find soft plywood under it.

Some other things we run into every week:

• Nail pops lifting a shingle tab so wind-driven rain gets under it
• Hail bruises that finally cracked through a season or two later
• Valleys and gutters so clogged the water backs up under the shingle edge
• Skylight curbs, and satellite-dish lag bolts nobody ever sealed
• Ridge and turbine vents put in without proper flashing

The stain is where the story ends. Water gets in high on the roof, runs along the underlayment or a rafter and drips off wherever it hits a nail or a seam. Chase only the stain and you'll fix the wrong thing. We work it backwards, from the attic up.

1. Attic first. Water tracks on rafters, rusty nail tips, dark decking. Those narrow it down to a few square feet of roof.
2. Then the roof. Every penetration, flashing seam and valley uphill of the stain gets checked by hand, just like a full roof inspection.
3. Hose test if we need one. When the entry point is still hiding, one roofer runs water section by section and another watches the attic. Low-tech. Works.
4. The repair. New step or counter flashing, a new boot, new shingles, or plywood cut out and re-decked, matched to your roof. Shingle repairs get Owens Corning and GAF products.
5. Photos and a written scope. Before-and-after pictures and a plain explanation of what failed and what we did about it.

Most leak repairs take a few hours and wrap up the day we start. Swapping a boot or resealing chimney counter flashing is a morning. Rebuilding a valley or re-decking a rotted section takes a full day, plus a second trip if we have to order matching shingles.

And sometimes a repair is just a bandage. Two or three unrelated leaks, flashing worn out all over, shingles shedding granules: on that roof, we'll show you the photos and say so honestly, and we won't push a replacement your roof doesn't need. Our roof repair page explains how we weigh one against the other. The estimate's free whichever way it goes.

Not every storm leak shows up right away. The May 2021 hail that tracked across San Antonio along I-10 toward Seguin bruised thousands of roofs that stayed dry until later that summer. Winter Storm Uri, in February 2021, led to more than 500,000 Texas insurance claims, and the insurance council listed leaking roofs among the causes. If a leak turned up after hail, wind or ice, call us before you pay for it yourself. Our in-house former insurance adjusters inspect the roof, document the damage and stay with your insurance claim from the free estimate all the way to recoverable depreciation. With thirty-plus years of claim experience, they know what the adjuster's going to look for before the adjuster gets there.

Water coming in right now? That's a different call. Our emergency roof repair crews tarp open roofs to stop the water and come back for the permanent fix once things dry out. In the meantime, move your valuables, put a bucket under the drip, and if the ceiling is bulging, poke a small hole so it drains and the drywall doesn't come down. Please don't climb onto a wet roof. We'd much rather tarp it. And leave the hardware-store roof cement on the shelf, because tar smeared over a flashing seam hides the problem, traps water behind it and makes the real roof leak repair harder once we open it up.

Texas-RRR is based in San Antonio, and our crews take leak calls all over the city. Our 8 full crew teams have finished more than 2,800 projects in Bexar County and the Hill Country. Plenty began as one stain on one ceiling. We're veteran owned, registered and insured. Call (210) 802-6906, or send us a photo of the stain and we'll tell you what we think before anyone drives out.