The asphalt roof is one of the most common. Most people call them shingle roofs, and they are generally easy to repair if you take a little time and get the right materials. You’ll need to inspect the roof first, to see what needs to be done. Sometimes you can just make some simple repairs, and other times it becomes necessary to do more extensive repairs, including replacing shingles. Unless the entire roof needs to be replaced, most homeowners can make these repairs without needing to call in a professional.
If you’re going to be working on a large area, though, you might want to have some help. At the very least you shouldn’t be entirely alone while working on a roof in case you should fall or otherwise injury yourself. Having someone else around can provide you with help in an emergency. Before you do any work on the roof, find out what you need to do and make sure that you get all the materials ready so that you don’t have to get up and down the ladder too much. You risk injury each time, so the less, the better. The best thing is to get everything together and make one trip up, complete the job, and make one trip back down.
Once you have everything ready, carefully pry up the shingles that are directly on top of the shingle that you need to replace. If you’re only doing a repair you can put some roofing tar under the damaged shingle to seal it up. For replacements, though, you’ll need to carefully pry loose the shingle that you would like to replace and put a new shingle in its place. You should be careful to seal up the nail holes that are left over from the old shingle and make sure that the shingles are re-seated properly.
Putting a little bit of roofing tar on these shingles where they meet one another is also important to ensure that they seal to one another properly. This will help to protect them from wind-driven rain and other types of damage that can happen to an otherwise good roof. When you’ve finished the repairs or shingle replacements you’ll want to make sure that you clean up the area and get any debris off of the roof. Leaves, branches, and other materials can cause water to back up on the roof and make it leak, so keep your roof clean and repaired and it will last a very long time.
At that point there should be very few contractors left on your list. Pick the one that you feel best about. Intuition is often ignored but it is a very powerful tool, so you should use it to the best of your ability in choosing a roofing contractor. When you’ve done the research and gone with your gut as well it becomes very difficult to get a roofing contractor that won’t do the job correctly for the price that was originally quoted.