Roof Leak Detection in Baton Rouge, LA

The inspection is free. What follows is priced against whatever is found, and our estimated band for a residential roof repair here is $350 to $1,500, with a split pipe boot collar at the bottom of it and a valley rebuild at the top. Those figures are on our Baton Rouge roof repairs page rather than repeated here.

Because water travels before it drips. It runs down rafters and across the back of the decking and falls through at the first opportunity, so the stain marks the end of the journey rather than the start. Repairing directly above a stain without tracing the water path first is how people end up paying for the same leak twice.

Wetting the roof deliberately, one small area at a time, starting low and working up, with somebody inside watching for the drip. It is deliberately slow, because soaking the whole roof at once only confirms there is a leak. It is worth doing on an intermittent leak or before anyone recommends replacing a roof that otherwise looks serviceable.

Penetrations, because every pipe, vent and chimney is a hole made in a watertight surface. Then valleys and wall flashings, where water concentrates. The plain field of the roof is the last suspect rather than the first, because a slope of shingles is the part least likely to fail on its own.

That is the single most useful thing you can tell a roofer, and it points away from the roof. Damp appearing in dry weather is usually condensation, warm humid air reaching a cooler surface such as the underside of the decking or a duct, though plumbing and air conditioning are worth ruling out too. What it is not is rain.

By what it correlates with. A leak follows rain and stops when the roof dries. Condensation follows temperature and humidity, appears on cool nights after hot days, and tracks how hard the air conditioning is working. We check the attic and take the history before quoting any roofing work.

Air sealing and ventilation rather than roofing. Gaps around light fittings and loft hatches let conditioned air into the attic, and a bathroom or dryer duct terminating in the attic puts warm wet air there directly. Our Baton Rouge roof ventilation page covers the intake and exhaust side of it.

It is actually easier, because the conditions narrow the fault. Rain from one direction only points at a detail on that elevation. Rain lasting hours points at saturation finding a slow path. A short violent downpour points at drainage capacity rather than the covering. Note when it happens and which way the wind was blowing.

Not on its own, and we will not tell you it does before the details have been eliminated. Pipe boots, flashings and valleys are repairable on a roof that is otherwise sound. A replacement is the answer when the covering itself has reached the end of its life, and that is a conclusion reached after the search rather than before it.

Finding a leak does not, and neither does repairing it, because a repair is not the reroofing that La. R.S. 37:3737(I) names. A full replacement does need a permit and an inspection, through East Baton Rouge Permits and Inspections or through St. George, Baker, Zachary or Central depending on the address.