What under your roof is due, even if the tile looks fine

A tile roof hides its own age. The tile can look untouched for decades while the membrane beneath it, the fasteners holding it, and the flashing around it reach the end on their own schedules. Enter when the house was built and what has been replaced, and it will show where each part stands.

This is a guide to what to look at, not an inspection. It sets ages against the service lives the trade generally expects. Concrete tile can outlast the range by decades; the membrane under it usually does not, and a house on the water ages its metal faster than one inland. Salt and sun count for more than the year.

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Set the house, then set what has been replaced

When was the house built? What is on the roof now?

What has already been replaced?

Leave a row on Original if that part was never replaced, or if a previous owner may have had it done and the paperwork did not come with the sale. Unknown is a normal answer on a house that changes hands every few years.

Roof covering Flashing at walls, valleys and penetrations Underlayment and secondary water barrier Gutters and downspouts Attic ventilation Skylights (if you have them) Chimney crown, cap and masonry (if you have them) Fascia and soffit Siding or exterior cladding Window seals

A roof here rarely gives out in the field. It gives out where the water is told to leave. Which is why flashing, not shingle, is the item most worth knowing the age of.

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1 The ridge. The highest, hottest course, and the one the sun works on all day.
2 The field. Tile or shingle above, and the underlayment that actually keeps water out below.
3 Valleys. One channel carrying what two slopes shed, at the pace this coast rains.
4 Flashing. Where the lanai and the enclosure meet the house, and where neither trade owns the seam.
5 Penetrations. Every vent and curb is a hole the underlayment has to seal, and the first place it stops.
6 Eaves and metal. Drip edge and fasteners, which salt air reaches years before it touches the covering.

Why intact tile can be sitting on a finished roof

Tile does not wear out on the timescale that matters here; the membrane under it does. When a roof is re-covered rather than stripped, the tile is new and the underlayment is whatever was there. The visible part resets; the working part does not. That is why this page asks about underlayment on its own line, and why on many houses here the honest answer is that no one has seen the deck since the house was built.

Flashing and fasteners follow the same rule, and in salt air they run on a shorter clock than anywhere else in the country. Metal that was sealed and kept on the last job can be rusting through under tile that looks perfect from the street. If someone says the roof is sound, ask whether they mean the tile or what holds it on.

Use this page

Copy or link to this freely, crediting calusaroofing.com. If it helps a seasonal owner in Cape Coral or Bonita Springs understand what the tile is hiding before they close the house up for the summer, it has done its job.

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