Tag: Shingles

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More Roofing Woes

IMG_8266.JPGAAAGHHHH. I woke up to this a few days ago, a roof tile had blown off in some winds. It wasn’t just this one, a whole bunch of them can be found around the property.

I don’t get it. After I made some repairs last year, they seemed to hold up. In fact it help up through hurricane force winds. I’m glad we just got winds and not rain. This weekend is suppose to be warm, I plan to get up there and make more more roof repairs.

[Update 3/9/07 12:50 PM] replaced the shingles today. I think I have discovered the failure mode. Some of the staples appear to be popping out. Even just a little bit of the staple popping out is enough to lift up the shingle, giving the wind something to grab onto. I inspected all the shingles and found several others that were sticking up. Removed those staples and replaced them with nails.

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Poor Quality Roofing Jobs

Poor roofing job - 1This is what a poor quality roofing job gets you, shingles that literally blow off the roof. In this case it appears that the roofer may have put one nail in the shingles then stapled the rest of it. Yes, freaking staples!

I’ve blogged about it before, New Mexico gets very windy in the spring and fall. This spring we we had winds up to 50 MPH and the windy season seems, to me at least, have lasted longer than normal. The winds came from the west and this side of the roof faces west. Along with the poor attachment of the shingles leads the the perfect recipe for this problem. The previous owners must have had this problem because they had nailed many of the shingles on this side of the roof down. Yet they made the problem worse by nailing through the visible part of the shingle, which is bad because they essentially broke through the seal of the shingle, leaving a place for water to leak through. All those nail heads had to be covered with tar.

Repairing these missing shingles was pretty easy. I collected all the blown off shingles from around the property rather than buying new ones. I carefully slid the shingles under neath the tiles above it, where it was missing, and put it back in place where it matches the position of the other shingles. I then lifted the tile above it up enough so I could put some nails in, 4 nails per shingle. The nails are under the shingles where they belong and safe from the elements. Hopefully the tar on the shingles melts and holds the whole mess together, or at least thats how its suppose to work.