Why A Skylight Is Leaking - Oakton, VA

 

Hi. This is Steve from Roofer 911.

I'm on a roof in Oakton, Virginia, and the homeowner has a leak inside their home from the skylight and I noticed people had been doing a lot of repairs. It looked like at one time they had a tarp on the roof and you can see all these staples going through the roof, but also, the metal flashing here is all pulled up so the water can very easily get underneath from a heavy downpour and leak right through the nail holes.

Now, also, on the sides and also the backside are the contractor who initially did the installation, he put nails into the step flashing and you can see right there there is a nail exposed. That nail should not be there. This nail should be holding this flashing underneath this one. So this piece of flashing would be overlapping the nail and if they would've done that, they wouldn't be having a leak.

Now, also on the backside, there's nails fastened into the flashing right up against the side, so what we need to do is remove all the roofing material completely around the skylight. Any flashing that's damaged is going to be either repaired or replaced with new. Then, we'll install an ice and water shield completely around the skylight and then we'll re-shingle it.

Also, the perimeter here, the outside perimeter where the glass and the metal frame meet, we're going to seal this with polyurethane because these skylights are known to develop hairline fractures so eventually it would develop a leak.

Now, even after we're done doing the roof repair around the skylight, there's still a very good chance the leak will come back and the reason why is because of the ridge vent up there. So, we need to remove about maybe 4 feet of ridge vent and then we're going to apply ice and water shield to the deck at both sides of the ridge and then we'll reinstall the ridge vent.

Really, this roof needs to be replaced very soon. Also, they had another leak over here right in the corner, right at the bottom of the ridge and in the beginning I thought it was possibly from the gutter overflowing, but it's not. I'll show you exactly what's going on here. Right there. You can see there's a hole right here so the water's seeping right through the hole and inside the home.

Again, my name is Steve from Roofer 911 and we specialize in roof repair in all areas of Oakton, Mt. Vernon and Northern Virginia and I can be reached at 703-475-2446. Thank you.
 

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