Finding a leak on an attached Trenton house
Leaks in older city homes are rarely where the ceiling stain is. Water hits a weak spot, runs along a rafter or the top of a party wall, and drips out several feet away. On an attached home it can even start on the neighbor's side of the seam. So a Trenton repair starts with tracing, not patching.
We work from the stain back to the source, on the roof and in the attic or ceiling space where we can get to it, and photograph what we find. The usual suspects in the city:
- The party-wall seam, especially where one owner re-roofed and the other didn't, and the two roofs were never tied together properly.
- The transition from the pitched front to the flat rear roof, where shingles meet membrane or old roll roofing.
- Brick chimneys, working or long abandoned, with crumbling mortar and counter-flashing that has pulled out of the joints.
- Parapet walls and copings on flat sections, where water gets in behind the membrane at the top edge.
- Pipe boots and old vents that have been tarred over more than once.
Storms, freeze-thaw and flat sections that hold water
Trenton sits right on the Delaware, and it gets central Jersey's full mix of weather. Nor'easters push rain sideways into flashing and under loose shingles. Summer thunderstorms can bring hard gusts, and street trees drop limbs on roofs. Winter is its own problem. Temperatures cross freezing again and again, and each cycle opens small cracks in sealant, brick and flashing a little wider.
Low-slope rear roofs take the worst of it because water sits on them longer. A ponded area that refreezes night after night will find every seam in an aging membrane. When we repair a flat section, we fix the leak and we also look at why the water is sitting there: a clogged scupper, a sagging spot in the deck or a downspout that backs up. If the membrane is worn out across the whole section, patching won't hold, and a new EPDM flat roof is the honest recommendation.
After a storm, we inspect the damage and plan the permanent repair. Our storm damage repair work includes photos of the damage, and we can meet your adjuster on site.
Repair or replace, and what the city requires
Plenty of Trenton roofs have been patched so many times that the patches are the roof. We'll tell you when that's the case. If the shingles still have life and the problem is one seam, one chimney or one pipe boot, a targeted repair is the right call and we'll do it. If we find two or three layers of old shingles, soft decking along the eaves and leaks in several spots, more patching is just spending money slowly, and a roof replacement makes more sense.
Small repairs are generally treated as ordinary maintenance. Larger work is different on attached homes: a full re-roof of a row home or twin generally needs a construction permit from the city's Division of Technical Services, and we pull it when it's required. If the house is in a historic district such as Mill Hill, we'll check whether the city wants to review the change first.
Getting to a leak early keeps a small repair from turning into wet insulation, stained plaster and a rotted deck. See our roof repair page for the full list of repairs we handle. For a sense of what a full replacement would run, try the Instant Roof Quote, then have us look at the leak itself.
More detail on how we handle this work anywhere we serve: Roof Repair. Everything we do in Trenton: roofing in Trenton, NJ.
