Roof leak repair in Jersey City: finding where the water gets in

Roofer Jersey City is an independent referral service, not a roofing company. When you call or send the form, an independent local roofer can contact you about your job; that roofer gives any quote and does any work.

What to do today

1. Stay off the roof. A wet or icy roof is a dangerous place, and a flat roof behind a parapet can hide soft spots
2. Move furniture, electronics, rugs and anything stored in the top floor away from the drip
3. Put down a bucket or a bin, with a towel inside to stop splashing, and lay plastic under it
4. If a ceiling is bulging with water, keep people out from under it
5. Photograph the stain, the drip and any damage, with the date, before you tidy up
6. Write down when it started and what the weather was doing
7. Call or send the form to get a roofer looking at it

Why the stain is not under the hole

On a flat roof, water that gets under the covering can travel a long way across a nearly level deck before it finds a gap to drop through. On a rowhouse, water that gets behind parapet flashing or through open coping often runs down inside the brick wall and shows as a damp patch on a side wall, sometimes a floor or two below the roof. On a pitched roof, water follows rafters and runs downhill before it drips.

So a roofer looking at a stain near the middle of your back bedroom may end up at a drain near the rear parapet, or at the flashing around the chimney two rooms away. That is normal. What matters is that the roofer can explain the path.

Read the leak by the weather

When a leak appears is one of the strongest clues you can give a roofer. The nearest long-term weather station, Newark Liberty International Airport, records about 46.60 inches of precipitation in a normal year, so most roofs here get plenty of chances to show their weak spots.

When it leaks	What it can point to
In every rain, even light rain	An open seam, a hole or failed flashing directly in the water’s path
In heavy rain	A drain, scupper or gutter that cannot keep up or is partly blocked, so water rises over a weak edge
In wind-driven rain from one direction	Flashing, coping or masonry on that side of the building, or a cornice facing into the weather
Well after the rain stops	Water trapped under the covering, or ponding that slowly finds its way in
When snow melts	Ice in gutters or at drains, so meltwater backs up under the roof edge
On sunny dry days	Possibly not the roof: plumbing, a radiator or a bathroom above. Tell the roofer

Snow matters here. The Newark Liberty normals show about 31.5 inches of snow in a year, most of it from December through March. After a snowfall, check whether your gutters and drains are clogged with ice, from a window and never from the roof.

Where leaks start on Jersey City roofs

On a row or brownstone

• Flashing where the flat roof turns up the parapet walls
• Open joints in the parapet coping, letting water into the brick from above
• Chimneys, especially old ones closed off long ago
• The skylight over the stairs and the roof hatch
• Drains and scuppers blocked by leaves and grit
• The cornice top at the front
• The line where your roof meets the neighbor’s

On a pitched roof

• Missing, lifted or cracked shingles, or slipped slates
• Valleys, where two slopes meet and water collects
• Flashing around chimneys, dormers and vent pipes
• Gutters that overflow or fill with ice

On a wide low-slope roof

• Seams between sheets of membrane
• Blisters that have cracked open
• Low spots where water ponds
• Curbs around rooftop equipment and vents
• Several drains, any one of which can block

How a roofer traces a leak

Tracing a leak is detective work, and a careful roofer goes in a sensible order:

1. Start inside: mark the stain, check how wet it is, and look above it if there is an attic or crawl space
2. Go up and look at the area roughly above the stain, then work uphill or toward the nearest edge, opening or drain
3. Check every penetration and every edge in that area: flashing, coping, the chimney, the skylight, the hatch
4. Check where water leaves the roof and whether anything is holding it back
5. Where the cause is still unclear, wet one area at a time with a hose while someone watches inside, so the leak can be matched to its source

Ask for photos of what the roofer found, and ask them to point to the spot on the roof that matches the stain inside. If they cannot find it on the first visit, a roofer who says so plainly is more useful than one who replaces things at random.

What to tell the roofer when you call

A few details help the roofer arrive ready. Say what kind of building it is: an attached row, a brownstone, a detached house or a walk-up. Say what floor the water shows on and roughly where, front, middle or rear, and against which wall. Say when it leaks, using the weather table above, and whether it is getting worse. Mention how you get on the roof, by a hatch, a bulkhead door or not at all, and whether a skylight or chimney sits near the stain. If you have photos, offer them. None of this commits you to anything; it simply makes the first visit more useful.

Temporary protection

When a leak cannot be fixed properly right away, because of weather or because the repair needs materials, a roofer may put temporary protection in place: a tarp on a pitched roof, a patch over a flat-roof opening, or clearing a blocked drain. Ask what is temporary and what is the real repair, and get the real repair in writing.

After the source is found

Once the cause is clear, the fix is usually one of the repairs on the roof repair in Jersey City page: new flashing, a seam repair, repaired coping, a cleared or replaced drain. If the roofer finds leaks in many places, or the covering is worn everywhere, the conversation may turn to roof replacement.

Repairing existing roof covering on a detached one- or two-family house is ordinary maintenance under the New Jersey code. For an attached rowhouse, a multi-family building, or any structural work, ask the Jersey City construction code office whether a permit is needed before work starts. Any repair of $500 or more needs a written contract, and the contractor should be registered with the NJ Division of Consumer Affairs: see how to check roofing contractors.

Leaks that come back

A leak that returns after a repair usually means the first fix was not at the true source, or that there was more than one source. Note the weather and the location again, and photograph it. Call the roofer who did the repair and show them. On rows, ask whether the parapet itself, not just the flashing, is letting water through: the article on parapet wall leaks explains why brick and coping matter. After a big storm, the roof checklist helps you see what changed.

Questions people ask