Remember being a kid trying to take the top off a soda can? What would you do? Bending the aluminum tab back and forth once, twice, three times … POP. The metal breaks right where the bend is. Easy peasy.
Fast forward to adulthood. You are sitting in your family room, surrounded by a warm fire on a snowy night. There are several inches of accumulation on your roof, and the heat from the fire is slowly melting away a small area around the brick. In the corner of the room, the ceiling seems to be dark.
Surely, it is just the odd light from the fireplace, right? Wrong. The flashing of your chimney has failed to keep the water out. Now you have a leak.
As a company, one of our guiding principles is: “If you don’t have enough (time, energy, money) to do it right, when will you have enough to do it over?” Never is this principle clearer than in the case of chimney flashing. Reflashing a typical chimney should be a relatively minimal expense compared to a full roof replacement and provide considerable peace of mind.
Flashing is the front line defender against leaks, and is out in the elements all day, every day. Heat, cold, snow, and ice, heat and UV rays – all leave their mark and contribute to the brittleness of that flashing. The shingles are interlaced with layers of step flashing wherever the roof intersects with a vertical plane (wall, chimney, fire break, etc). That metal flashing should be replaced every time the roof is replaced for a variety of reasons, but it all boils down to leak prevention.
So why would a homeowner choose not to replace the flashing?
Many homeowners mistakenly believe that, as part of an insurance claim, “if I needed it, the insurance company would have said so.” On a personal note, I get it. It is hard to know whom to trust. You may think that a roofing contractor stands to “gain” from a higher sale, and an insurance company stands to “lose” by paying out a higher claim amount. While that is technically true, there is much more to the story. From the contractor side, we hold a warranty against leaking on every new roof we install. Being asked to carry that warranty when an element was not replaced by us is similar to asking your collision center that fixes the dent in your car to hold a warranty on your brakes. From the insurance company’s perspective, it may simply not be a covered item that they can pay for based on the peculiarities of your chosen policy. For example, not all policies pay for code upgrades. Meaning it could be a code violation, and unless you have selected a code upgrade rider, your policy would not cover the repairs needed.
We will do whatever you, as the homeowner, choose, but we will always counsel you to replace flashings at the same time you replace the shingles. Not only does it avoid leaks, but it also avoids the expense of wood rot and interior repairs down the line.
If you need further information or a professional inspection of your roof and flashings, please call us at (502) 749-7663.