If water is coming into your house right now, stop reading and call. Everything below still applies afterwards, and it will make more sense once the ceiling has stopped dripping.
Active leak? Call now. We tarp and make safe across DFW, including nights, weekends and during storms.
Not every roof problem needs someone on it tonight, and knowing the difference saves you money. Here is the honest triage we use on the phone.
If in doubt, call and describe it. We will tell you honestly whether it needs someone tonight or whether it can wait until Tuesday. Talking it through costs nothing, and we would rather tell you it can wait than send a truck you did not need.
What you do before the truck gets there materially changes how much this ends up costing.
Cut power to any circuit near the water at the breaker, not at the switch. If the ceiling is sagging over a bed, a sofa or a walkway, move people and pets out of that room entirely. Do not stand under it while you work out what to do.
This feels wrong and it is right. A bulge is a pocket of water held by a layer of paint. Left alone it grows until the whole section fails at once, dropping wet drywall, insulation and everything it has soaked up across the room.
Put a bucket underneath, stand to the side rather than beneath, and puncture the lowest point of the bulge with a screwdriver. The water drains in a controlled stream into your bucket. You will repair a small hole instead of an entire ceiling.
Photographs and a short video of the water coming in, the ceiling, the affected contents and the room as a whole. This is your evidence and it disappears the moment you tidy up. Photograph it again after the tarp goes on.
A wet roof, in the dark, in the wind, is how people get seriously hurt. It is also how scuff damage gets attributed to you rather than the storm. Let someone insured and equipped do it.
We will talk you through the first hour on the phone while the crew is on the way. You do not have to work it out alone.
Storms are the obvious cause, and our storm damage and hail damage pages cover those in depth. But a large share of the emergency calls we take in North Texas are not storm related at all.
The rubber collar around a plumbing vent is the single most common leak point on a Dallas roof, and it is the one people never think of. Texas UV cracks that rubber, typically in years eight to twelve, long before the shingles themselves are finished. The leak appears suddenly in a heavy rain and shows up on the ceiling directly below or slightly to one side. The fix is inexpensive. Finding it is the hard part.
Anywhere the roof meets something vertical, a wall, a chimney, a dormer, relies on flashing. Sealant used instead of proper step flashing eventually dries out and cracks. Chimney counterflashing pulls out of the mortar as the masonry weathers. These leaks are often intermittent, appearing only when rain comes from a particular direction, which makes them maddening to diagnose from inside.
Worth knowing because it saves people money. A blocked condensate line on an attic air handler overflows the drain pan and drips through the ceiling. It looks exactly like a roof leak, but it happens on hot dry days rather than during rain. If your ceiling is wet and it has not rained, check the drain pan before you call a roofer.
Uncommon here and severe when it happens. The 2021 freeze produced enormous numbers of roof and plumbing failures across North Texas on homes never designed for prolonged sub-freezing conditions. Ice dams form at the eaves, water backs up under the shingles, and the leak appears after the thaw rather than during the freeze.
Debris in a valley or an overflowing gutter pushes water sideways and upward, under the shingle courses and behind the fascia. This is why a roof that has been fine for years suddenly leaks in autumn once the leaves come down.
Sometimes a roof has simply finished. Brittle, curling shingles with widespread granule loss will start leaking in several places at once, and no single repair will hold it. At that point emergency work is about stopping tonight’s damage while you plan a replacement.
We will ask where the water is entering, whether the ceiling is holding water, whether it is near electrical, and what the weather is doing. That determines whether this is a tonight job or a tomorrow morning job, and we will tell you which honestly.
A proper emergency tarp is not a sheet weighted with bricks. It is heavy duty poly, run up over the ridge so water cannot get under the top edge, secured with battens screwed through into the decking, and sealed at the fasteners. Done properly it will hold through subsequent storms for weeks while a permanent repair is scheduled and, if there is a claim, while the adjuster works through their queue.
Water travels. It enters at one point, runs along a rafter or the underside of the decking, and drops somewhere else entirely. The stain on your ceiling is frequently several feet from the hole. Tracing it properly means going into the attic and following the path back uphill, which is why an interior inspection matters as much as the roof itself.
Photographs before, during and after, tied to the date, plus a written description of the cause and the temporary work performed. If you are filing, this is the file. See the storm damage page for how documentation decides wind claims.
Scheduled once the weather allows and, where a claim is involved, once the scope is agreed. Emergency work stops the bleeding. It is not the repair.
| Emergency work | Permanent repair | |
|---|---|---|
| Purpose | Stop water entering now | Restore the roof properly |
| Timing | Same day, often same hours | Scheduled, weather permitting |
| Weather | Performed in poor conditions | Needs dry conditions to install correctly |
| Lifespan | Weeks | Years to decades |
| Insurance | Usually covered as mitigation | Covered if the cause is a covered peril |
People occasionally ask why we cannot just do the real repair on the night. Asphalt shingles need to be installed dry, and their adhesive strips need heat to bond. Laying shingles onto a wet deck in the dark produces a repair that fails and traps moisture in the decking underneath. Tarp tonight, repair properly this week.
Three things worth knowing before you call your carrier.
Mitigation is normally covered. Reasonable emergency measures to prevent further damage are typically reimbursable, and your policy generally obliges you to take them. Tarping is not an optional expense you are choosing to incur, it is compliance with your duty to mitigate.
Failing to mitigate can cost you the rest. If a roof is left open and water spreads through the ceiling, into the walls and down to the flooring, an insurer can decline the additional damage on the grounds it was preventable. The tarp protects the claim as much as the house.
Keep every receipt. Tarps and materials, fans and dehumidifier rental, a hotel night if the home is genuinely not habitable, and any emergency call-out fees. Photograph the damage before and after each stage.
Call us before you call the insurer if you can. Not to hide anything, but because a claim reported with a cause, a date and photographs already in hand moves very differently from one reported as “my ceiling is wet”. Either order works. The documentation is what matters.
Homeowners are often surprised that we spend as long in the attic as on the roof. The reason is that a roof leak almost never enters directly above where it appears.
Water gets through the roof at the failure point, then runs. It follows the underside of the decking until it meets a rafter, tracks along that rafter, and drops wherever the path is interrupted, often at a nail, a truss joint or a run of ductwork. On a moderately pitched Dallas roof the entry point can easily be ten or fifteen feet uphill of the ceiling stain, and on the opposite side of a room from where you would guess.
The practical point for you as a homeowner is this: be suspicious of anyone who diagnoses a leak from the driveway, and be equally suspicious of anyone who wants to replace the whole roof on the strength of one stain. Both are shortcuts around actually finding the source.
A roof that has been repaired three times in two years is not unlucky. It is telling you that either the source was never actually found, or the roof has reached the point where fixing one spot simply moves the failure somewhere else.
By far the most common explanation. Someone sealed the nearest visible thing to the stain, the leak stopped for a while because the weather changed, and it returned with the next storm from that direction. Each repair adds sealant and confusion without addressing the entry point.
Once shingles are brittle, curling and losing granules across the whole field, they fail wherever the next stress lands. Repairing a section on a roof in that condition often damages the surrounding shingles simply through the process of lifting them, so a patch creates the next leak.
Some roofs leak because of how they were built rather than how they have aged. Valleys that dump into a wall, a low slope section shingled as though it were steep, missing kickout flashing where a roof meets a wall above a gutter, or an addition tied into the original roof badly. These recur no matter how many times the shingles are replaced, because the water is being directed somewhere it should not go. Fixing them means changing the detail, not the material.
If you are on your third repair, ask for the diagnosis in writing rather than another patch. A contractor who cannot explain where the water enters and why has not found it.
The roof is only the first half. Water that reached the interior needs drying properly, and this is where slow responses turn into expensive ones.
We handle this side too. Our water damage restoration page covers extraction, drying and rebuild, and having the same firm handle the roof and the interior avoids the gap where two contractors each assume the other documented something.
We respond across the Dallas Fort Worth metroplex from our DeSoto office. Response times are fastest in southern Dallas County, including DeSoto, Duncanville, Cedar Hill, Lancaster, Red Oak, Glenn Heights, Ovilla and southern Dallas, and we cover Dallas, Grand Prairie, Arlington, Mansfield, Midlothian, Waxahachie, Irving, Garland, Mesquite, Rowlett, Richardson, Plano and Carrollton.
Emergency work is one part of what we do. Our main page for a roofer in Dallas covers repair, replacement and commercial work, and our DeSoto roofing company page explains why response times are shortest close to our office.
During a major storm event, every roofer in the metroplex is triaging. We work active interior leaks first, then exposed decking, then everything else, and we will tell you honestly where you sit in that queue rather than promising a time we cannot hold.
Same day in most of DFW, and often within hours for an active interior leak. During a major storm event the whole market is saturated and we will give you an honest position in the queue rather than a time we cannot keep.
Yes for genuine emergencies. Water entering a house does not wait for Monday.
It depends on access, roof pitch, the size of the area to be covered and the conditions on the night. Emergency mitigation is normally reimbursable under your policy, so for most storm-related call-outs the cost forms part of the claim. We will explain what the work involves before we start it.
A properly installed one will. Battened, screwed into the decking and run over the ridge, it holds for weeks. A tarp weighted with bricks will not survive one windy night, which is the difference between an emergency repair and a temporary gesture.
Most often a blocked HVAC condensate line overflowing the drain pan in the attic, or a plumbing leak. Check the drain pan on your air handler first. If it is dry, call us.
Yes, deliberately and from the side, with a bucket underneath. A controlled release into a bucket is a small patch. Letting it fail on its own drops the whole section along with soaked insulation.
Usually. Attic inspection, staining patterns and moisture readings identify most sources. Where a leak is genuinely intermittent we can run a controlled water test on the suspect area to reproduce it.
Not necessarily. If the cost is below your deductible, and particularly if you have a percentage-based wind and hail deductible, filing may not benefit you. We will tell you which situation you are in after looking.
We tarp first so tonight does no more damage, then assess properly in daylight. If replacement is the answer, our roof replacement page covers what drives the cost and how to compare quotes.
Water coming in? Call now. If it can wait until morning we will tell you that too, and it costs you nothing to ask.