What to do when your roof starts leaking

Old roofs and winter weather don’t go together very well. You’ll often find that rain and wind cause your roof to leak, particularly if there are missing tiles or broken areas. This is never a good thing; water damage from rain can be devastating, and even if you catch it quickly it can still leave stains and cause mould. So with that in mind, it’s essential to know just what to do if you find that your roof is leaking so you can minimise the damage as much as possible. Read on to find out more.

Contain the Water

The first thing you’ll need to do when you have a leak is to contain the water. You won’t be able to stop the rain, no matter how much you wish you could. You won’t necessarily be able to make any repairs right away, especially if it’s cold, dark, wet, and windy, so by containing the water, you can prevent as much damage as possible from occurring.

Use buckets, bowls, and any other watertight containers you can find to place under the leaks. Ideally, these should be large containers, so you don’t have to keep emptying them, but anything is better than nothing. When you have contained the obvious leaks, it’s wise to check for any others that you might not yet have seen, just in case.

Minimise the Damage

Once the leaks have been dealt with, you must have a look at the damage that occurred before you realised there was a problem. Hopefully, it won’t be very much at all, but you’ll still need to see what has happened.

The best move to make now is to cover any valuables – including soft furnishing that can be very badly damaged by water – with plastic sheeting or a similar waterproof fabric. If any other leaks occur, no more damage will be done.

Make Some Calls

As soon as you can, you’ll need to make some important calls. The first will be to your insurance company. If there is a lot of damage, you might be able to claim for repairs and replacing items through your household insurance. Rather than worrying about what money you’ll get back and whether your insurance covers this issue or that one, it’s best to just make the call or enquire online and find out for sure. Once you know what your insurance will and won’t cover, you can set about getting repairs organised.

The repairs are what you need to make the next phone call about. If the roof can be repaired, a specialist roofer will be required to do the job as soon as possible. However, in some cases, more than just a few fixes and replaced tiles are needed; in some cases, you might need an entirely new roof, in which case you’ll need professionals such as Roofspace Solutions.

Although this is a big job, it will certainly be worth having done if the alternative is that every time it rains the damage gets worse, your house gets damp and mouldy, and you have to keep placing buckets under every leak. Once the new roof is installed, these issues are no longer something you have to worry about, and you can relax in your home whatever the weather.