(214) 807-0414Request an assessmentFlashing guide
An open field of shingles is the easiest part of a roof to get right. Leaks start where the plane is interrupted: a pipe, a chimney, a wall, a skylight, a valley, an edge. Flashing is the metal that manages those interruptions. It is also the part most often left in place when the covering above it is replaced.
In short
Where a roof runs up alongside a wall, each shingle course gets its own bent piece of metal woven in one at a time. A single long strip caulked to the wall is the usual substitute, and it is the most common wrong answer at that junction.
01
Where a roof plane stops against a wall face, apron flashing runs that junction and turns up behind the cladding. The failure here is usually depth: metal that does not rise far enough behind the wall covering, or that was cut around an obstruction and sealed instead of formed.
02
Pipe boots, vents, curbs and equipment mounts each break the water plane. Rubber boots in this climate crack from UV well before the roof around them wears out, which is how a roof that looks sound leaks at a two-inch collar. Boots are consumable. The flashing under them should not be.
03
Flashing often stays in place during a re-roof because removing it means touching masonry, cladding or a wall finish. Sometimes that is defensible. It should be a stated decision in the scope rather than something you learn about later from the ceiling below.
Questions
Sealant has a place in specific details and a service life much shorter than the roof. Where sealant is the only thing keeping water out of a junction, that junction is being maintained rather than built, and it will want attention again long before the covering does.
Wind direction and rain intensity change where water is driven. A junction that sheds vertical rain can take water on a driven one, which is why an intermittent leak usually points at a flashing detail rather than an opening.
Which flashings are replaced and which are reused, named individually. Pipe boots, valley metal, step, apron and counter flashing are separate answers, and a line that reads “flashing as needed” has given none of them.
The most likely explanation is that the leak was never in the covering. If the flashing at that junction was refitted rather than replaced, the new roof went on over the thing that was actually failing. Go back to the scope and read what it said about that detail, then ask for the area to be opened and photographed. A leak returning to the same spot is a question about one junction, not about the whole roof.
It can be either, and that split is why chimneys leak for years. Step and counter flashing at the chimney is roofing work. Deteriorated mortar joints, a cracked crown and a missing or failed cap are masonry, and water arriving through any of them looks identical from the ceiling. Ask for the assessment to say which it is and what evidence points there. Where it is both, the order the two trades work in matters.
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Short, routing-only questions. Nothing here asks you to diagnose the roof yourself.