Roofing contractor in Toronto

Old Toronto houses fail in predictable places

Twenty years of climbing ladders in this city and the pattern barely changes: half the roofs we look at in Toronto sit on houses built before anyone thought about attic ventilation. Narrow lots, steep pitches, three-storey semis packed shoulder to shoulder, and a whole lot of surface area draining into one undersized eavestrough at the back. Add freeze-thaw — and Toronto gets it twice a week some Februaries — and water that gets under a shingle in the afternoon expands as ice overnight and works the nail hole a little wider every cycle.

The other Toronto specialty is ice damming along the eaves. Heat leaks out of an under-insulated attic, melts the snow up top, the meltwater runs down to the cold overhang and freezes into a ridge. Everything behind that ridge is now a pond, and shingles were never designed to hold standing water. That's why we run ice and water shield well up from the eaves and check the attic intake before quoting anything — patching the surface while the attic still cooks the snow just buys you another January.

Summer wind is the third one. Once shingles are past their useful life the sealant strip lets go, and a hot August gust rolling across the lake lifts tabs on the exposed west and south faces. You'll find them in the driveway before you find them on the ceiling.

What a Toronto call usually sounds like

"There's a brown ring on the ceiling in the back bedroom and it got bigger after Tuesday." Or: "I came out to the car and there were three shingles on the driveway." Or from a shop owner on a main street: "the ceiling tile above the till is dripping and the flat roof was done maybe twelve years ago."

None of those tell you where the leak is. Water travels — it can enter at a chimney flashing, run along the underside of the deck, and show up eight feet away over a different room. So we get on the roof, look at the actual failure point, and photograph it. Then you're looking at a picture of your own chimney instead of taking our word for it.

Repair or replace — the honest version

If the field of the roof is still flexible, the granules are mostly there, and the failure is one flashing detail or a cracked boot, a repair is the right answer and we'll say so. Repairs are cheaper for you and they hold, and we'd rather do the small job now and the whole roof in six years than oversell you today.

When the shingles are curling at the edges, bare in patches, brittle enough to crack when you step on them, or when we open the deck and find soft sheathing, patching is throwing money at it. We'll show you what we found and price the replacement so you can decide with real information instead of a sales pitch.

The full assembly we install

Tear off to the deck, inspect and replace any rotten sheathing, ice and water shield at the eaves and every valley, synthetic underlay over the field, new drip edge, then architectural shingles. All new flashing at chimneys, walls, skylights and pipes — reused flashing is the leak we get called back to most often on other people's work. Ridge venting sized to the attic so the intake at the soffit actually has somewhere to go.

Then eavestrough and downspouts checked or replaced, water directed away from the foundation, and a full cleanup with a magnet sweep across the driveway, walkway and lawn. Toronto lots are tight and your neighbour's car is three feet away — we plan for that before the first bundle goes up.