Roofing questions from Austin homeowners, answered

Say what the roof is doing and where. The ring on the ceiling in a bedroom. The shingle you can see missing near the garage. The dented gutter after a storm. If you know the material and the roof's age, say those too. Say what the weather did in the last few days, whether this is a house, a rental or a small building, and anything that limits access like a locked gate or a dog. The rest sorts itself out on the phone, and the get in touch page lists the same prompts.

Someone who knows the house can say where the stains are and when they appeared, which helps the look answer the first set of questions. Say on the call who will be at the house when the roofer comes by, and we can speak to that then.

Yes. The callback form on the site takes a name, a number and a short note, and that reaches the same place a call does. For water coming in now, call instead. See a repair for the slower trouble; a roof opened by a storm is the other category.

Tell your landlord or the property manager what you see on the ceiling or at the eave. We work on the roof itself, which is the owner's property, and the landlord decides on the work. Austin has 257,933 renter-occupied homes,¹ about 36,000 of them detached houses.² We don't give legal advice about leases.

Hail knocks granules off a shingle, exposes the asphalt to ultraviolet light and makes the shingle more brittle over time;³ dents and tears can let water through. A March 25, 2009 Austin storm⁴ left dented gutters among the damage. Travis County sees most of its hail in spring: 216 of the 274 reports of 1 inch or larger since 1996 landed in March, April or May. See hail damage for the full look a roofer runs through afterward.

Sometimes. Dents on gutters and vents are a sign to call. The shingle surfaces themselves (lost granules, dents and tears) are a close-up look that is a roofer's job. Owens Corning, a shingle maker, says many warning signs of storm damage are visible without getting on the roof, which a ground-level look with binoculars can catch.⁵ The slopes themselves and the shingle surfaces come after that.

No. Never go out during a storm or right after one; once it is safe to be outside, look from the ground, keeping clear of any downed or hanging line, and leave the roof itself to a roofer. The page on an open roof covers what to do inside once a call is placed.

Significant freezing rain, sleet or snow hits the Austin area about once every two years on average.⁶ In the 2023 ice storm trees gave way under the weight of ice and fell onto cars, houses and power lines⁷ as metro outages passed 200,000. The emergency page covers the roof side of what to do once a storm has done its damage.

A few lifted shingles, one bad pipe boot or a loose flashing are repairs. Wear across most slopes, two layers already on the deck, soft deck in several places, or hail damage across the whole roof points past a repair. An inspection can sort which it is, and the piece on a tear-off versus a repair walks through where the common percentage people quote actually comes from and what Austin's own line is.

A sentence in the 2023 Florida Building Code, Existing Building (section 706.1.1), which says not more than 25 percent of the total roof area may be repaired, replaced or recovered in any 12-month period⁸ unless the whole roof is replaced or recovered to the code. That is Florida's rule. The 2021 International Residential Code's reroofing section states no percentage. Austin's own line is different, and the full piece on the Austin side of the question covers it.

Asphalt shingles are, per the shingle makers' trade association,⁹ still the most popular residential roof covering in North America. The Metal Roofing Alliance says most metal roofing carries a Class A fire rating, the highest.¹⁰ On a metal roof the panels grow and shrink with temperature, and the MCA manual says that movement has to be handled in the design and installation.¹¹ The full comparison is in metal or shingles.

Sometimes. The 2021 International Residential Code's reroofing section bars a roof recover¹² where the existing roof is water-soaked or has deteriorated to the point that it isn't an adequate base, where the existing covering is slate, clay, cement or asbestos-cement tile, or where the roof already carries two or more applications of any type of covering. ARMA, the shingle makers' trade group, says that before a recover the local code has to permit another layer, the structure under the deck has to be able to bear the extra weight, and the deck has to stay sound and hold fasteners.¹³ Austin's wildfire-area rule and Development Services' own text decide the rest for a given address. See a replacement and a new roof for the two paths.

Austin Development Services' work-exempt page¹⁴ is the place to read this. For a house, swapping asphalt shingles for asphalt shingles carries no building permit, with one condition: if the property sits in the Wildland-Urban Interface area and the job covers 50 percent or more of the roofing, the exemption falls away. Decking repair of 128 square feet or less is also on the exempt list. A specific address is a Development Services call, not a roofer's.

Austin Fire says more than half of Austin falls into one of three Wildland-Urban Interface zones,¹⁵ each with site, infrastructure and structure hardening requirements. Under the City's WUI code, replacing 50 percent or more of a roof covering requires replacing the whole roof covering to the new-construction standard¹⁶ in Section 504.2: a Class A covering, and under 504.2.1 the valleys in metal flashing or a woven, closed valley with the flashing left visible for inspection. Austin Fire lists other zone rules in separate sections, such as noncombustible gutters with leaf guards (504.4) and ember mesh of 1/8 inch or less on attic vents (504.10). Austin Fire says the WUI rules apply even when no permit is needed.

Check the HOA's own rules before changing a roof material or color. Texas Property Code Section 202.011¹⁷ bars a property owners' association from prohibiting or restricting a property owner who is otherwise authorized to install shingles from installing shingles designed primarily to be wind and hail resistant, more energy efficient than customary composite shingles, or solar generating. The statute keeps that bar on the condition that once installed the shingles resemble the subdivision's authorized shingles, are more durable than them and of equal or superior quality, and match the look of the surrounding properties.

Austin's Planning department says routine maintenance and in-kind repairs do not need historic review.¹⁸ The City's Historic Design Standards¹⁹ say replacing roof material with a different material on a historic building does need historic review. The Historic Preservation Office decides for a given landmark or contributing building, not this page.

Size, pitch and the shape of the roof (hips, dormers, valleys) set the base. On top of that come the number of layers to tear off, the condition of the deck under the covering, the flashings and vents that need replacing, and the covering itself. Austin's wildfire-area rules can change what has to be used, which changes the number. What moves the price sorts the drivers.

Two houses with the same square footage on the ground can differ in slope, in the number of valleys and penetrations, in the deck condition under the covering, and in what the City requires in that area. ARMA says the most accurate way to measure a roof is from on the roof, that measuring should be done by a roofing professional, and that it does not recommend homeowners climb onto a roof to take measurements.²⁰ The look is the measurement.

Weather changes the sequence and sometimes the materials. The Weather Service calls March through May Austin's severe weather season,⁶ and NOAA's Storm Events Database holds 216 Travis County reports of hail 1 inch or larger in those three months, from 1996 to mid-2026.⁴ Normal highs reach 90 by May 26 and stay above 90 until September 23, and at Camp Mabry the median first 32-degree freeze is December 3 and the median last is February 20²¹ on the 1991 to 2020 normals. The piece on a replacement covers the drivers.

Tell us what the roof is doing. If leaving a message or using the callback form is easier, both reach the same place. We work from the information you give us; the first conversation is about the roof, not about selling. See the contact page for the prompts to think through before calling.

Commercial roofs on warehouses and big retail, gutters and gutter guards, siding, windows, chimney masonry, solar panels and any wiring (an electrician's call), remodeling and additions as construction, and tree work.

On Austin houses and small residential buildings. When you call, say where the house is; we can speak to it then.

Call (512) 515-9559 and tell us what the roof is doing.