All About A Roof Leak in Jackson MS

Chuck: Awesome. Good to see you again. It's been a week, uh, you know, I enjoyed our podcast last week about getting a new roof and, uh, today, you know, you and I talked about the next common problem that homeowners have is a roof leak. So can you tell us what a roof repair looks like with.

Construction and roofing.

Austin: Sure. Yep. So oftentimes, you know, we get a lot of calls, right? I mean, what prompts somebody calling a roofers, they have a leak. So we would put a lot of emphasis and training into making our reps, understand how to find the diagnosis, leaks and funny story. You know, this, uh, we had a rep who was unable to find a leak.

You know what I mean? He, he was out there. He was searching the house, went through the entire process. Could not identify the leak. And as you saw in the Google review, Michael Deere had to go out there and actually find that leak himself. Cause that's, that's what we pride ourselves on, right? Is that we don't have all the answers, but we're going to do everything in our power to solve your problem in some way or another.

So generally speaking, there's a several leaks that are most common, so we call it the hot list. So when you get a leak call, you go out to the appointment. We immediately hit the hot list and the hot list or pipe jacks, valleys, roof to walls, and then transitioning. Right. So those, those areas are jus the area and it's, and what it ends up being is something coming through the roof or something that impedes the water from flowing off of the roof.

And so when we assess those areas, we may want a hundred percent see what we're looking for. But as Michael Deere always says, and the trainings that he's given me over the years and everybody else is that water runs down. So, if you can go into a home and you can identify the general vicinity of where that leak is coming in, and what we'd like to do is even sometimes measure off of the exterior wall.

So if the leak is possibly, uh, let's say it's 15 feet in from the back wall of the property, we'll actually take a tape measure and measure that. And then we'll go vertically up to the roof in the same distance, or at least around about the same distance to help us identify that problem. A lot of guys don't spend the time in the addicts that they need.

I've found in my career that, that I find most of my leaks from the attic. Right. Because. Just by simply turning the lights off in the attic will allow you to see light or potential light, right. That could be coming through and then a good flashlight. Right. And some of those cracks and corners of the attic that people don't really like to get through.

We loved in sales meetings and in staff meetings, guys come in, they're covered in insulation, right? Cause they've been on their hands and knees and an addict army crawling to the other side. Uh, with a flashlight, trying to find the problem. So once we've kind of assessed where the leak is, right. We then develop a price to fix that leak.

Right. And then once we build that price, we also like to give that customer and understanding of anything else that we think may potentially. So we want you to know a trajectory, right? And then we're going to ask you a few strategic questions. Like, Hey, how long do you plan on being in the home? Is this a long-term picture for you or are you looking for a temporary solution?

A permanent solution? Because again, it's like I told you last week, it's about transparency. We teach a consultation style. Selling methodology. We are going to walk into your house. We are going to consult with you about what's going on in your property. Figure out what your needs and desires are and then fit you into something that's suited for you.

Chuck: Okay. So if my goal, I know that our goal is to move out of town and move into another house in four years, you're going to recommend that off of what was going

Austin: on in my life. We'll have to do role-playing situations in, in review customer situations in India. To make sure that our guys are providing the best service possible.

So in, in a role play zero, if I were your, I was at your home Chuck, and you asked me, Hey, look, you know, I've got this leak. Here's where it is. And I know I'm going to be out of this house in four years from now. So what I'm going to do for you is I'm going to obviously diagnose the. Prepare a price for you for that leak, but then I'm also going to tell you, Hey, these are the other areas that you need to keep an eye on because I think they may leak within the four-year period.

And then I would also give a recommendation of what I think a home inspector would flag on that property. If it's not causing you a problem,

Chuck: I guess in all reality, most homes are going to have to, to, I guess, for plumbing pipe. And if one is dry-rotted, I guess it would make sense that all four are going to be dry.

Right. So I, I see what you're saying there. If you do one pipe, but you might as well do all four of them, cause it's coming

Austin: exposed. Nailheads, cracked Ridge caps, you know, drones are so big now. You know what I mean? We used to get a lot of, of leads because inspectors would have us come out and do their roof inspections.

Well, now, with these drones, these home inspectors are flying these drones up and spot and all kinds of ancillary items that may or may not be super problematic, but what's a home inspector get paid. So we like to give that information as well as, Hey look, just so you know, you've got a few exposed nail heads.

You've got a couple of cracked Ridge calves. Are these necessarily causing you problems right now? No, but if you aren't going to put the house in the market, you need to understand, this is probably something that's going to get flagged. And obviously it's cheaper if we try to deal with those things while we're already there.

Chuck: Yeah. I agree. Totally agree. So if you're going to, there's no sense in. Doing pipe boots one at a time every six months, because I can see that cost a lot more. Just the travel

Austin: time. Yeah. The way I like to explain it to homeowners or new sales reps that I'm training when they come in to the county. If you don't go to the doctor and then all they do is look at your foot, right?

Like they run blood work, they take your pulse, they take your blood pressure right now. They may not be doing deep dives into the blood work of you, you know, in particular. But if you come into the hospital and your foot's hurting, you know, they're going to look at all aspects of your body to see if there's something related.

And we like to do the same thing with our homeowners. You know what I mean? Like, Hey, obviously this pipe right now is a pre. Right. But if there's other aspects of that Piper areas around that pipe, that could be problematic. We want to let you know about those. We don't necessarily care if you choose to fix them or not.

That's not what we're here to do. We're here to lay the information out and let you make a decision that's best informed for you. Okay. Well, this

Chuck: all makes sense and go through that list. One more time of the most common things that you guys see leaks

Austin: from, right? So you've got, uh, pike, jacks, valleys, flat.

And then transitions,

Chuck: that would be like, uh, your house is going down the slope and then you've got a patio pan or something. And it's like,

Austin: yup. If I were to rank the top three reasons that someone called us for a leak, it is a pipe. A piece of flashing or some area where the water is not allowed to move freely.

Chuck: Okay. Tell me the most common rooms that these pipe boots are going to be in. Cause I was standing, raising to be in a bathroom

Austin: bathrooms. Yes. Bathrooms and bedrooms. You know, generally the kitchen may be kitchens inside at the time, but what I always recommend to people is look in the rooms. You don't go in off.

Closets pantries any of these rooms that, you know, spare bedrooms, bonus rooms, and it's good. It's great for a homeowner to just go in their attic. There's nothing wrong with that. As a homeowner, you should go into your attic two or three times a year. When you change your filters, just take a mag line up there and shine.

Water shows so visibly on a piece of decking. So many problems could be solved for such a lesser cost if there were addressed early, but by the time it makes it from the roof through the insulation, to the screw, the sheet rock it's like that thing did not pop up yesterday. That's been suddenly leaking for a long period of time.

Yeah. And

Chuck: that just reminds me of a problem. I had, I don't know, a little over eight years ago, we'll do another podcast on this one because this is a problem on its own. It's not really from your roof, but it looks like it because I looked up and I'm going, I had just gotten my roof. So I'm going okay.

Well, money rose leaking. Right? Well, come to find out. I called the crew back and they came and looked at simple. This is not your roof. Your air conditioner pan is overflowing. It's in your attic. So I want to talk to you about that and see what walk-ins cause obviously the thousands of rope that you guys have done.

There's got to be some commonality there. I had a friend of mine. One time kids were young, so they're throwing baseballs and softball and all that kind of stuff up there and got in the gutter downspouts. And next thing you know, that went back upon her. So I want to talk to you about that on top of the pipe boots and things that you're talking about that are roof related.

I'd love to hear you talk about non-roof. Roof leaks. Right? So a good one, because this is a very common problem that people have pipe boots. If they don't have a good one, like you guys, you told me in the last week though, that you guys use a bullet, but it's, that's the one encapsulate over the pipe. So that's going to be, that's going to be a problem.

That's going to hit them at some point. Right. So good points. Anything you want to leave a potential prospect? They're looking at a repair. Would

Austin: you guys? I think the best thing that I would recommend is, is, like I said, going in the attic, but walking around your home, you know what I mean? Like it just, there's not people do not spend enough time evaluating the exterior of their property.

We look at our floors and look at our countertops. We hate the bathroom vanity we have, right. Just before the seasons change for the next year. Just take a walk around, just take a walk around the house, look up. If something sticking up, does something look a certain way that doesn't look bad before? Are you noticing more algae or something like that that maybe you didn't notice be aware people are.

So they lack awareness in so many ways when it comes to their,

Chuck: one of the most important things to me as a homeowner would be getting with a roofing contractor. This got a good reputation that is going to fix my problem, you know, forget calls for just minute fix my problem and it going to stand by.

Okay. So another good reason to be looking at walk-ins because of the reputation, you know, we always talk about leaning on the Google reviews and things like that. So that's a good way to vet a roofing contractor. If you've got a roof leak, check out those Google reviews, make sure that they've got good ones and got a lot of them because I know walk-ins has got hundreds.

Good talk. I love the subject and I really want to talk about that non-roof leak thing with you next week. Absolutely.