The winter months can be quite unkind to your roof. After all, your roof is your home or factory’s first line of defence against rain, hail, wind, and sleet. It works hard to protect your family and your workmates from the elements. If your roof fails, it can result in hefty repair bills for roof replacements, damage to your prized possessions, and reduced productivity at your factory.
So, now that the wintery weather is almost behind us, it’s the perfect time to perform a quick check-up of your roof, just to be sure that your home or business is protected as much as possible. Think of it as a spring clean for the structural integrity of your property.
Common Damage to Roofs During Winter
There are some common types of damage that roofs suffer during winter. Often, this damage is simply unavoidable. Unfortunately, there isn’t too much we can do to prevent bad weather. What you can do is keep an eye out for the following types of damage:
- Damaged flashings: flashings are regularly used around chimneys, skylights, other penetrations in your roof (like air-conditioning units), and to cap roof borders. During winter, flashings can be easily damaged, allowing water to enter your property.
- Overflowing gutters: in winter gutters are prone to filling up with debris (including leaves, mud, and branches). If gutters become too full, they overflow and fail to syphon excess water away from your property. Take a look at our recent article on Quick and Easy Tips for Gutter Maintenance for how to make sure this doesn’t happen to your property. In winter, gutters can also pull away from your home (usually due to expanding and contracting building materials in extreme weather conditions). If this happens, your gutters will fail to properly draining all excess water from your roof.
- Damaged shingles: old roof shingles can be damaged in any number of ways. They can buckle and curve. They can blister due to inadequate ventilation. They can even blow straight off your roof (not that unlikely given Melbourne’s strong winds). Wherever shingles are missing or damaged, water can leak straight into your property. If you’re having any of these types of issues with your shingles, it might be time to replace them with a sturdier metal roof that isn’t prone to damage in high winds.
- Split downpipes: if you live in an area that is really cold in winter, you might even discover that some of your downpipes have split or cracked as a result of contracting (and then expanding) in the cold weather.
Warning Signs of a Damaged Roof
There are a number of tell-tale signs that you can look for to determine whether your roof has survived Melbourne’s winter. These include:
- Spots on your ceiling: if the paint on your ceiling has unusual or dirty marks appearing in certain places, it’s a good indication that all might not be right with your roof. Leaking water can enter through a damaged roof, and puddle on your ceiling, causing dirty watermarks to appear in your ceiling’s paint job.
- Peeling interior wallpaper: if the wallpaper inside your home is peeling off the walls, then chances are you have a leak in your roof somewhere. The moisture that a roof leak lets into your property can easily travel down your walls, making wallpaper glue not quite so sticky anymore.
- Bowing ceilings: if you come across a bowing ceiling in your house, it is highly likely that water is pooling within your ceiling cavity. The weight of the water causes the ceiling plaster to droop. If this problem goes unfixed, you might even find that your ceiling cracks or collapses. This is definitely one problem that you need to have an expert inspect and fix.
- Bubbles or spots in exterior paint: similar to spots on your ceiling, if you come across any bubbles or stains on the paintwork on the exterior of your roof, it is usually a sign that moisture has seeped in somewhere. Again, if you notice this at your property, it’s best to call in an expert.
If you’re in doubt about any of the issues or tell-tale warning signs mentioned above, your best bet is always to call in an expert for a roof replacement in Melbourne. If you need some professional advice, contact ACR Roofing today.