This summer has, unfortunately, been crazy for rain and thunderstorms in the fair city of Toronto, where Professional Roofers operates. For our family based roof repair services business of modest proportions, it has been an extremely busy time. Between leaks from the rain and the damage from falling trees, we have had a lot of roofs to work on.

Toronto’s slogan is “a city within a park”, which rings true considering how many trees there are lining our streets, valleys, hills and parks. The rainfall has been so intense this year that the bloom is incredible, with lots of dense foliage, bright, beautiful flowers and big, healthy trees. For farmers in the outskirts of Toronto, this has surely been a boon compared to the hot dry spell of last summer.

The downside of all this (in addition to rain spoiling summer weekends) is that the rainstorms have also brought thunder and lightning, which are a hazard for old trees that can fall on electric wires and even worse: your roof!

For this reason, it is prudent to hire arborists certified by the ISA (International Society of Arboriculture) to prune your trees every few years. This eliminates dead unhealthy branches, which can attract borers and other aggressive species, tax the tree’s energy and – worst of all for you – fall on your house and seriously mess up your roof.

If you didn’t manage to take this precaution, or if you were the victim of a freak accident, we forgive you – sometimes its difficult to predict these things. If you’ve had the branch safely removed and need someone to come over, assess the damage and figure out a plan of attack for getting it fixed quickly, then we’ll be there in a jiffy to help you out. Even if a tree branch that’s not that big falls down on your roof, there’s a decent chance that it will take a few shingles with it, exposing the whole roof to potential water damage. Always better to have Toronto roofers come for a consultation if an event of this nature should occur. This leads us to our next subject: water damage and leaks.

SUMMER STORMS AND BROKEN ROOFS

With summer drawing to close, the last thing you want is your roof getting all messed up. As we’ve remarked before on this very blog, summer lends itself extremely well to roof maintenance, but once you get into winter with the snow and ice buildup, things can start to get a bit trickier. Especially if there is a thick layer of snow on top of your roof, the last thing you want is a compromised roof that is tough to access.

If a branch takes off some shingles, or if the asphalt shingles have degraded from years of wear and tear, you may start to see signs of leakage. If the weather-proof membrane on your flat roof was installed improperly and you’re starting to see signs of leakage and you need to fix a flat roof in Toronto or the GTA, we are certainly trained to fix that as well.    

To re-iterate: it’s been a wet and stormy summer that has not been easy on roofs, so take this chance to have your roof inspected before we move into mold and then snow season – you’ll save yourself money in the long run.