Preparing Your Roof for Perth Storm Season
A little preparation before storm season saves a lot of grief during it. This covers the simple checks that stop a Perth storm turning a small weakness into a flooded ceiling.
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Perth roofs fail in June because of what happened in February. Summer opens the gaps and the first serious front finds them.
This is the list worth working through in autumn, in the order that matters most.
Clear the gutters, and the valleys
The single highest value job on this list and the one most often half done. Gutter Replacement Perth are the obvious part. Roof Valley Repairs Perth are the part that actually floods roofs.
A valley is the metal trough where two roof planes meet, sitting higher than the gutter and carrying concentrated runoff from both sides. Packed with litter, it dams water above the tile line and pushes it underneath into the roof space.
Clearing valleys requires getting onto the roof. Anybody clearing your gutters from a ladder with a blower has not touched them.
Check the ridge line from the ground
Walk the perimeter with binoculars and look along every ridge and hip. You are checking for caps sitting proud of their neighbours, visible cracking along the mortar joint and any vegetation growing out of the join.
Then look in your gutters. Grey grit and mortar crumbs sitting in the bottom are perished pointing and they are the earliest warning available that the ridge line will admit wind driven rain.
Ridge failures produce a distinctive Leaking Roof Repairs Perth: it only happens when rain arrives with wind behind it and it stays dry through a week of steady drizzle. If that describes your house, this is the reason.
Deal with broken and slipped tiles now
A single Tile Roof Repairs Perth through summer is nothing. The same tile through a winter of driven rain wets battens, soaks insulation and eventually stains a ceiling.
Look for tiles that have slid down the slope out of alignment, cracks visible from the ground and gaps where one is missing entirely.
A tile that keeps slipping after being reset is telling you about the batten underneath rather than the tile and that is worth investigating before the season rather than during it.
Trim what overhangs the roof
Branches over a roof do three things: drop debris into valleys and gutters, hold shade and moisture against the surface and occasionally come down in serious wind.
Limb strikes are the defining storm event in the hills suburbs and anywhere with mature street trees and the damage travels further through the structure than the visible hole suggests.
Trimming is not our trade and it is the cheapest single thing you can do to reduce both maintenance and risk.
Check where the water goes after the downpipe
Downpipes discharging against a wall or into a garden bed deposit thousands of litres a year exactly where you least want them. On reactive clay that concentrated wetting moves footings seasonally.
Check each downpipe is connected to a soakwell or stormwater point and that water is actually going in rather than surfacing.
Older Perth homes were frequently built with fewer and smaller outlets than a modern intensity storm requires. If your gutters overflow along their whole length in heavy rain while clean, that is capacity rather than blockage and adding an outlet fixes it permanently.
Look inside the roof space
Torch, manhole and ten minutes. You are looking for daylight, old water staining on rafters, damp or compressed insulation and rust around nail plates.
Old staining that is dry tells you there was a leak once. Fresh staining tells you there is one now.
Press a screwdriver into a batten near any stained area. Firm timber is fine. Soft or fibrous timber is a finding worth acting on before winter rather than after.
Book anything that needs booking
Repairs happen year round, but the trades get busy the moment the first serious front arrives and stay busy until spring.
Coating and restoration want the dry months and cannot be done between fronts, so if that is on the horizon it needs planning a season ahead.
An inspection now costs nothing and tells you what is coming. Ring 0421 768 842 and we will look at it properly before the weather does.
The things most people forget
Whirlybirds and roof vents. They have bearings that seize and flashings that lift and a seized whirlybird in a gale is a loose object over your ceiling.
Solar mounting points, particularly on installations more than a few years old. Those penetrations are the most common source of new leaks and nobody checks them.
Aerial and satellite dish brackets, which are fixed through the roof covering and frequently forgotten entirely.
Skylight seals, which perish in Perth sun and fail exactly when driven rain arrives.
The garage and shed roofs, which nobody inspects and which frequently contain older or more fragile material than the house.
If you are in a bushfire area
The same preparation serves two purposes. Cleared gutters and valleys remove ember fuel as well as improving drainage.
Closing gaps at ridge and hip lines matters for embers as much as for wind driven rain, since those are exactly the openings ember attack exploits.
Storm Damage Roof Repairs Perth left open through spring becomes a summer problem, which is why closing it properly before the season is worth more than doing it afterwards.
Screened vents, sound sarking and clear roof surfaces all form part of the same picture and the pre-winter job list overlaps almost entirely with the pre-summer one.
A realistic timeline
February and March: book anything substantial, because the trades still have capacity and coating work needs the dry weather.
April: clear gutters and valleys, walk the perimeter, deal with broken tiles and trim overhanging branches.
May: last chance for anything weather dependent and the point at which booking becomes difficult.
June onward: repairs only, weather permitting and expect to wait after any serious front.
The whole list costs very little if it happens in autumn and considerably more if it happens as an emergency in July.
Inside the house, before the weather arrives
Check that ceiling manholes actually open. A manhole painted shut during a renovation means nobody can reach the roof space when it matters, including whoever attends an emergency.
Locate your switchboard and know which circuits serve which rooms, so isolating power near water is a thirty second job rather than a search by torchlight.
Clear the roof space of anything stored there that would be damaged by water and anything obstructing access to the areas most likely to leak.
Check that bathroom and kitchen extraction fans vent outside rather than into the cavity. Fans discharging into a roof space produce condensation that looks exactly like a leak and misdirects everybody.
Photograph each elevation of the roof from the ground, dated. If you later need to demonstrate prior condition to an insurer, those images are worth more than any description.
Book early. Every roofer in Perth fills up the week the first serious front arrives and autumn capacity disappears faster than owners expect.
The whole list costs very little done in April. The same work done as an emergency in July costs considerably more and takes considerably longer to arrange.
Dulux AcraTex accredited applicators
Powerdrive Roofing is an accredited applicator for the Dulux AcraTex roof restoration system, so your coating carries the manufacturer’s product warranty alongside our own 10-year workmanship warranty. How the Dulux AcraTex warranty works →
What Perth homeowners say
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Products we specify and why
Two documents should exist at the end of a coating job. The manufacturer warranty on the Dulux AcraTex roof restoration system, which is only available through accredited applicators, and a written workmanship warranty from whoever did the work. They cover different failures. Tile matching, where it is needed, comes from Bristile Roofing or salvage stock at Roof Top Industries.
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