Repairs · Salt Lake City & surrounding counties
Chimney Flashing Repair
The detail that leaks on more houses than any other.
What chimney flashing repair involves
Step flashing up both sides, a proper cricket on the high side, counterflashing let into the masonry.
Sealant smeared over a chimney gap buys a year. The metal detail lasts.
What matters on chimney flashing repair
Finding the actual entry
Water gets in at one place and shows up at another, often several feet away, because it travels along framing and decking before it finds a path down. Repairing the visible stain leaves the entry point open, which is how the same leak gets fixed three times.
When a repair stops making sense
The line is not a number of years. It is whether the mat is still flexible, whether granule loss is local or general, and whether the repair count is climbing. When all three point the same way we say so rather than keep selling repairs.
Chimney Flashing Repair on real jobs
We work Salt Lake City & surrounding counties, 9 counties in all, with 27 years in the trade and the last 8 as Hancock Signature.
How the system goes together
What underlayment actually does
Shingles shed water. Underlayment is what handles the water that gets past them, and something always gets past them. Synthetic underlayment has largely replaced felt because it does not wrinkle when it gets damp, does not tear when the wind catches it during installation, and keeps its footing when a crew is working a steep slope.
Felt still shows up
On small repairs and on matching an existing older assembly it is fine. On a full replacement up here there is no reason to go back to it.
Decking is the part nobody plans for
The sheathing under the roof only gets looked at once every couple of decades, which is when the old roof comes off. Older homes up here might have skip sheathing, plank decking with gaps, or plywood that has been soft over a leak for years. It gets replaced where it is bad, because fasteners do not hold in punky wood and a soft deck telegraphs every wave through a new roof.
It is measured, not guessed
Sheet count gets documented once the roof is open, before anything goes back down.
What we check
- Step flashing at every wall course
- Counterflashing let into the masonry, not surface-sealed
- The cricket on the high side of the chimney
- Pipe boot condition and collar cracking
How we approach it
Look first
We get on the roof and read what is actually happening before quoting anything.
Say what we find
Photographs and a plain explanation, including when the answer is that you do not need us yet.
Built in sequence
Crews we hire and run, working the right detail in the right order.
Leave it clean
Magnet over the yard, container gone, walked with you.
Cold nights pull condensation into the attic
A lot of what people call a roof leak up here is not a leak. Warm moist air from the house rises into an attic, hits a deck that is well below freezing, and condenses on the underside of the sheathing. In the morning it drips. Homeowners see a wet spot and think shingles, when the problem is that the attic is not moving air.
Frost on nail points
We look for rust rings and frost on the nail shanks. That pattern tells you it is condensation before a single shingle comes off.
A slide onto a walkway
A loaded slope above a front door or a side path is a safety matter before it is a roofing one. Snow releases in one piece, and a hundred pounds landing on a step is how people get hurt. It also tears at the gutter on the way past and bends the hangers out of the fascia.
Fixing it means changing the geometry
Retention hardware, or a small roof over the entry to break the fall, or moving the path. Something has to change, because the slope will keep doing what slopes do.
What this looks like on a real roof
There is a version of chimney flashing repair that gets sold off a clipboard in the driveway and a version that comes off actually reading the roof. The second one costs the same and lasts.
What follows is the part most people never get told: what usually went wrong before we arrived, and what the job looks like when it is done in the right order.
Where roofs go wrong
The shortcut we see most
Sealant troweled over a flashing gap. It buys a season, sometimes two, and it makes the eventual repair harder because the sealant has to come off first.
What good looks like instead
The metal detail rebuilt so water is shed mechanically, with sealant used only where a mechanical detail cannot do the whole job.
Signs worth a look
- A stain that grows after every storm
- Drips that appear hours after the rain stopped
- Shingles missing in a line rather than singly
- Daylight at a penetration when you look up from the attic
What to expect
How we price a repair
After we have been on the roof, not before. A repair that looks like one shingle from the ground is sometimes a rebuilt valley, and quoting it sight unseen helps nobody.
How long a good repair lasts
A properly rebuilt detail lasts as long as the roof around it. That is the point of doing it mechanically rather than with sealant, which is a consumable and behaves like one.
When we will tell you to wait
If a roof has a few years left and the repair is holding, we will say so. Replacing early is money spent before it needed to be.
Related work
Repairs covers more than one job, and they are not interchangeable. These are the others in the same family, each on its own page.
Questions we get asked
Not the question you had? Call the shop and ask a person. We would rather talk it through than have you guess from a website.
(801) 382-8898Is a repair a waste of money on an old roof?
Sometimes, and we will say so. If the mat is brittle across the whole roof or the repair count keeps climbing, a repair is just buying a few months.
Why does my roof leak in one spot but the stain is somewhere else?
Water travels along the framing before it shows on a ceiling. We trace it back to the entry point rather than repair the stain.
Can you match my existing shingles?
Often closely, rarely exactly. Sun fades a roof over the years, so a repair patch usually shows slightly until it weathers in.
Will you tell me if I do not need a new roof?
Yes. Plenty of what we look at turns out to be a repair, and we say so. A roof with years left in it gets left alone, and you get the photographs either way.
Do you handle the insurance side?
On hail-damaged roofs, we work with your insurance to get the roof covered. We document the damage thoroughly with photographs, so the claim reflects what is actually on the roof.
Do you work through the winter?
Yes, with judgment. Shingles need to seal, and in genuine cold that takes longer or needs hand sealing. Emergency work happens whenever it has to. Full replacements get scheduled around the weather rather than forced into it.
Talk to Hancock
Ask about chimney flashing repair
Call (801) 382-8898 or send a note. We will look at the roof and tell you straight what it needs.