In the Valley, roof problems don't announce themselves in July. Everything up there is bone dry, the sealant is soft from the heat, and nothing leaks because there's nothing to leak. Then late October or November rolls in, the first storm sits on the house for a day, and every gap the summer opened up gets found at the same time. The good news is that most of what fails in that first rain is visible weeks earlier, if you know where to look.
What you can check from the ground
You don't need to climb anything. Walk the house slowly at a time of day when the sun is low and raking across the roof; that light shows texture a noon sky flattens out. Bring your phone and zoom in.
- Shingle edges that curl or lift. After a hot summer, the bottom edges of older shingles cup upward. Wind gets under a cupped edge, and rain follows it.
- Dark streaks or bare patches. A shingle that looks darker or smoother than its neighbors has lost its granules. That's the shingle's sunscreen, and without it the asphalt underneath cracks quickly.
- Granules in the gutters and at downspouts. A little is normal on any roof. A sandy pile at the bottom of a downspout after a dry summer means a section is shedding fast.
- Anything sitting on the roof. Leaves, seed pods, and branches pile up in valleys and behind chimneys. Wet debris holds water against the shingles for weeks and blocks the path it's supposed to drain down.
- Flashing that has pulled away. Look where the roof meets a wall, a chimney, or a pipe. Metal that has lifted, rusted through, or lost its bead of sealant is the single most common place a Valley roof leaks first.
Then go inside
The attic tells you what the roof won't. Pick a bright afternoon, turn the lights off, and look up. Pinpricks of daylight are openings. Then turn the lights on and look for the stains: brown rings on the underside of the decking, rusty nail tips, insulation that's matted or discolored in one spot. Dry stains from last winter still count; they mark exactly where water came in before and will again.
The two things worth doing before the rain
First, clear the gutters and downspouts once the leaves have mostly dropped, and make sure water actually runs out the bottom. A full gutter in a storm backs water up under the first course of shingles, which is how a roof with nothing wrong with it ends up staining a ceiling. Second, trim any branches resting on or scraping the roof. Everything else on the list above, leave to someone with a harness. Walking a shingle roof softens and scuffs it, and a fall off a single-story house is still a long way down.
If you found one item on the list, watch it through the first storm. If you found two or more, or anything in the attic, book the inspection now. September and October are when our calendar still has room; the week after the first big rain, it doesn't.
What a fall inspection actually covers
We walk the whole roof, not just the side facing the street. Every flashing gets pressed on and resealed where the bead has failed. Valleys get cleared. Exposed nail heads get sealed. Lifted shingles get tacked and glued back down where they can be saved, and we note the ones that can't. You get photos of all of it, a short written summary, and a straight answer on whether this roof needs anything else before winter or just a fix in the spring. The inspection is free, and if the answer is "you're fine," that's what we'll tell you.
Roofs rarely fail in a dramatic way. They fail a little at a time, over a summer, and then a storm collects the bill. Spend twenty minutes walking your house this month and you'll know whether that bill is coming.
