Emergency Roof Repair in Thornhill

Typically within 60 minutes, and often less, since both halves of Thornhill are a short drive from our North York shop. What slows a call here is access rather than distance, particularly on the narrower older streets around Thornhill Village where staging space is limited.

Three things, in order. The crew stops the water with a secured tarp on a slope or a bonded temporary patch on a flat section, photographs the failure before it disappears under the covering, and then traces where the water actually got in. Before leaving we give you a written note of what failed, which becomes the starting point for both the permanent repair estimate and any claim.

Yes, every night of the year, holidays included. A leak left running until business hours has usually done most of its damage by then, so a night call is really about shrinking the eventual repair bill rather than about speed for its own sake.

In a Thornhill winter that is almost always an ice dam letting go. Over a stretch of cold days ice builds along the eave, meltwater from higher up the slope pools behind it and creeps under the shingles, and when the temperature shifts that water comes through into the ceiling. Covering the roof achieves nothing once the meltwater is in the assembly, so the work is opening a path through the ice for the water to escape and protecting the rooms underneath.

Yes, and on Thornhill houses it is one of the calls we get most. Thirty year old membrane is too brittle to tarp, so we bond a self adhered temporary patch over the opening that will stick in whatever the weather is doing that night, and we lay it so it does not form a new hollow for rain to sit in.

That is what it is written for. The damage is photographed before we cover it, and the report states what failed, the likely cause, and the repair we recommend. On a Thornhill roof that is thirty years old, the adjuster's main question is whether this was a sudden event or slow wear, and a dated, specific account is what answers it.

Stay off the roof and look after the inside: move furniture and anything valuable out of the way, put a bucket or bin under the drip, and if the ceiling has a sagging bubble of water, poke a small hole at its lowest point over a container so it drains in a controlled way instead of dropping the drywall. If water is reaching a ceiling light or an outlet, turn that circuit off at the panel. Take photos from inside as it happens, since those pictures often end up being the most useful evidence in the claim.

Usually, and it is worth doing, because the cause is almost always heat escaping into the roof space combined with intake ventilation that was buried when the attic insulation was upgraded. Clearing and restoring the soffit intake, correcting the insulation at the eaves, and sealing the air leaks from the living space below addresses that mechanism and ends the annual emergency. Where the covering is coming off anyway, ice and water shield at the eaves and valleys should go on at the same time.

Frequently yes, though it varies by policy and it is more often disputed than storm damage is, because a carrier may treat recurring ice damming as a maintenance issue rather than a sudden event. What helps is documentation that establishes this instance as a discrete failure with a date and a described mechanism, and what hurts is a history of the same leak every winter with nothing done about the ventilation. We report what we actually find either way.

There is an after hours dispatch component and we state it on the phone before we come out, not on the invoice afterwards. You will know what the callout costs before agreeing to it. What the emergency visit buys is containment, documentation, and a diagnosis, and the permanent repair is quoted separately in daylight so the two are never bundled into one number decided under pressure.