Signs you need a new roof, and signs you only need a repair

Plenty of valley roofs that look finished from the street are structurally fine with three or four failure points, and repaired properly they go on for years. Plenty of others look acceptable and are genuinely done. Telling those apart is the whole job.

Everything in this guide can be checked from the ground or from inside your house. Please do not get on the roof. Roofs are the leading fall hazard in home maintenance, a Las Vegas roof surface in summer can cause contact burns, and walking a tile roof without knowing the load points cracks tiles underfoot.

What you can check from inside the house

This is where the most useful early evidence usually is, and it is completely safe to look:

• Ceiling stains anywhere, including ones that have dried out, since in this climate leaks dry completely between storms
• A ceiling stain that has reappeared after being painted over
• Paint or drywall texture that has bubbled, cracked or gone slightly soft in a patch
• A musty smell in a room, hallway or closet, particularly after rain
• Daylight visible through the roof decking, seen from the attic hatch with a torch
• Water tracking, rust or dark staining on the underside of decking or on nail points
• Insulation that looks flattened, darkened or compacted in one area
• A top floor room that has become markedly harder to cool than it used to be

What you can check from the ground

Binoculars from the garden will tell you more than most people expect. Look for:

• Missing, slipped, cracked or visibly displaced tiles
• Shingles that are curling at the edges, lifting, or missing entirely
• Bare patches where the surface looks different in colour or texture from the rest
• Granules from asphalt shingles accumulating in gutters or at downspout outlets
• Sagging or dipping anywhere along the roof line, which is a structural signal and is serious
• Ridge and hip lines that look uneven, with caps out of alignment
• Flashing that is lifted, bent or visibly separated at walls and chimneys
• Debris sitting on the roof or in valleys
• On a flat roof, water still standing more than a day or two after rain

Signals that point toward replacement

None of these is conclusive on its own, but together they shift the balance:

• Failures spread across the whole roof rather than concentrated in a few spots
• The roof is at or beyond the age where its covering is expected to be done
• Underlayment failure on a tile roof, which is a whole-roof condition rather than a local one
• Multiple previous repairs that keep being followed by new leaks nearby
• Decking that is soft, delaminated or sagging
• Shingles brittle enough to snap rather than flex
• More than one existing layer, with the lower ones in poor condition

Signals that point toward repair

Equally, these suggest the roof has life left:

• Three or four discrete failures you can point at, with the rest of the roof consistent
• A single failed penetration, such as a perished pipe boot
• Storm damage confined to one area or one elevation
• Tile that is intact and underlayment that is assessed as sound
• A roof comfortably within its expected service life with no widespread surface degradation

How to avoid being oversold

A full replacement is the largest sale in this trade, which makes it the recommendation most worth testing. That does not mean contractors recommending it are wrong. It means you should ask them to show you.

Ask for photographs of the specific conditions driving the recommendation. Ask whether the failures are isolated or spread across the whole surface. Ask what the underlayment condition is, on a tile roof specifically. And if the answer is replacement, get a second opinion.

A contractor confident in their assessment will not mind any of that. One who resists it has told you something useful.

Check the contractor, not just the roof

• The Nevada State Contractors Board publishes a free public licence search, so you can confirm a contractor is licensed, check the classification they hold and see their licence status before any work starts. (Nevada State Contractors Board, Contractor License Search)
• The board also publishes a separate free discipline search, which lists formal disciplinary action taken against licensed contractors. Most homeowners never learn it exists. (Nevada State Contractors Board, Discipline Search)