As with any other roof, a garage roof will need regular maintenance and sometimes repair. If you originally built the garage yourself, you may be aware of what maintenance tasks need to be performed, or how to repair a damaged roof. These things may not be so obvious to you if you hired a contractor to build for you, but it doesn’t mean you can’t perform repairs and maintenance yourself. Much of the necessary work is easy enough, but first you need to check for signs that repair or maintenance is even needed. Let us look at some of the things you should check regularly:
- Leaks. These will often be completely obvious. If you see wet spots or drops of water anywhere but on the floor after driving your car in the rain, make sure to check where that water is coming from. Get a ladder and take a look at the underside of the roof. You may find that one of the trusses are soaked at the bottom. This does not have to mean you have a leak in the immediate vicinity – it could be situated near the top of the roof, where rain water could have run all the way down a beam, forming a puddle at the bottom. By the time the water has dried along the length of the beam, the end of the beam will probably still be soaked, since this is where the water accumulated. You may have a leak somewhere between trusses too, of course. A good way to locate a hole in your roof, is to stand in your garage with all doors closed, windows covered and no lights on – on a sunny day. This way you may be able to see sunlight coming in through the leak-hole. If your roof construction consists of roofing felt on a plywood deck, this method will probably not work, unless the leak goes straight through both felt and plywood in the same spot.
- Defective rain gutters. Very important to check as often as you can. If it is raining, you can see if the water is coming out where it shouldn’t – over the edge of the guttering for instance, or down the walls of the garage. Once the rain stops, go take a closer look. The first thing to check for is to see if the gutter simply needs a good cleaning. Dead leaves, twigs and bird’s nests cab clog up the water flow completely, so these will have to go. When you are up there, be sure to take a look in the down-pipe, as stuff could have ended up down there too. With the cleaning out of the way, you could check for holes and tarnishing. Especially steel and copper gutters can tarnish all the way through, letting water simply drain through the bottom of the gutter. From there on, it will probably either soak the eaves of the roof, or drip down on the ground in great quantity, leaving puddles on the ground. You don’t want that, as your walls and foundation could become severely damaged over time. Generally you wan the drainage system to be intact and leading water effectively the right way – along the gutter, into the down-pipe and bye-bye away in the sewer. I’ve seen gutters that slanted the wrong way, meaning away from the down-pipe. Not very effective, and these were brand new! Do remember to check this before paying the contractor – although this sort of problem could also kick in due to poor maintenance.
- General condition of building materials. Look at the roof cladding, flashing, eaves, soffits, rakes, ridges, vents, etc. Do they look like they could fail any minute – or do they seem good for another couple of years? If in doubt when looking at these things, always try to think in terms of water. What happens if it rains on this thing right now? Or if snow gathers around it? Would that result in water damage? Ventilation – if present on your garage roof – must be able to ventilate the underside of the roof unhindered. Same principle as for cleaning gutters really. Painted wooden surfaces should not be peeling, covered in algae or moss or look shriveled. It is the combination of sun, wind and water that takes its toll on wood, so remember to keep it protected with a new layer of paint once every few years. Exactly how often will depend on the situation, so get into the habit of checking up on the state of things at least once a year.
This covers the basics, but is by no means an exhaustive list. What is most important here, is to be able to look at things and decide if they are in an acceptable state of repair or not. Once you become familiar with that mindset, you will find it easy to see what needs work and what does not.
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Category: Garage Roofing
