When to Replace Your Roof (and When a Repair Will Do)

The honest answer to "do I need a new roof?" is usually decided by three things: the age of the shingles, where the failures are, and the condition of the deck underneath. A single flashing leak on a ten-year-old roof is a repair. Granule loss across the whole south slope of a twenty-two-year-old roof is not.

Age is the blunt instrument. A standard three-tab asphalt roof in this climate tends to give you somewhere around twenty years; architectural shingles often more. If yours is near that and you are already patching, spending money on repairs is usually buying months, not years.

Location of the failures matters more than the number of them. Leaks clustered at valleys, chimneys, skylights and wall intersections are flashing problems — that is detail work, and it is genuinely repairable without touching the field of the roof. Leaks scattered across open slope, or shingles that are curling, cracking or shedding granules everywhere, mean the material itself is finished.

Then the deck. Once water has been getting into the sheathing for a while, you can end up with soft spots that no amount of new shingle will fix, because there is nothing solid to nail to. We check for this before quoting, and if a section of deck needs replacing we say so in the estimate rather than discovering it on tear-off day and handing you a change order.

Ventilation is the part nobody asks about and everybody should. A roof that cannot breathe cooks its own shingles from underneath and shortens its life considerably. If the last roof failed early, inadequate ridge and soffit ventilation is one of the first things worth ruling out — otherwise the new one will do the same thing.

Not sure which side of the line your roof is on? Call Montocon General Contractor at (240) 357-7306 for a free inspection and a written estimate. We currently have $500 off your new roof available on new roofs.