(214) 807-0414Request an assessmentActive water
Water is coming in now. Every useful thing you can do about it is inside the house, and none of it involves going up. Contain it, keep people clear of what is wet and what is loaded, and preserve the evidence while it is still in front of you. Finding the entry point comes after that, and it is rarely where the water appears.
Request an assessment
What this covers
Water running near recessed lights, ceiling fixtures or a panel makes that room a live one. Kill the circuit only if the panel is dry and reachable without standing in water. Otherwise keep everyone out and call an electrician or the utility.
A painted ceiling holds water until it does not, and then it comes down as a sheet. Move what is underneath if you can do it from the side, keep the room shut, and stay out from under it. Nobody should stand beneath a loaded ceiling.
Buckets and a bin liner under the drip, plastic sheeting over what cannot move, contents lifted off wet flooring, and photographs of the room before you rearrange it. All of it is done at floor level. None of it requires the roof.
What to know
Going up to look, in the dark and the wet, on a surface that may have been damaged. Opening the ceiling to chase the water, which turns one repair into two and destroys the path you were reading. Painting over a stain before it has been recorded. Throwing out wet contents before they have been photographed.
Water lands at the first low point it reaches, which can be a room away from where it came in. The trace starts with what you already have — which storm, which wind direction, which rooms, what time — then works upslope through the attic to penetrations, valleys, wall junctions and edge details. The first plausible opening is not always the only one.
A repair closes the opening. Wet insulation, saturated drywall and framing that needs monitoring are a different trade with different equipment, and they are scoped and priced separately. Treating them as one job is how one of them quietly does not get done.
Choose a starting point
A short, non-diagnostic guide for working out what kind of assessment conversation to prepare for.
Decision support
Four situations, and the sensible next move for each. It does not diagnose a roof, decide insurance coverage, or stand in for somebody looking at the property.
Questions
Not while standing under it, which is how that goes wrong. Clear the room, keep it shut and let someone deal with it who is not directly beneath the load. A container on the floor is a reasonable thing to leave there first.
Yes. The dripping stopped because the supply did, not because the opening closed. The next rain does the same thing, and in between the deck, insulation and framing stay wet with nothing moving air through them.
Move what water would ruin and lift what is sitting on wet flooring. Photograph the room first, including the things you are about to move. Damaged contents are part of what happened, and they stop being evidence once they are in a skip.
Not by touch, and not by the stain fading. Drywall, insulation and framing hold moisture long after a surface feels dry, and the trade that handles drying works to meter readings taken over successive visits rather than to appearance. That is separate work from closing the opening, with separate equipment and a separate price, so it is worth asking who is doing it rather than assuming the roof repair covered it.
Assessment request
Short, routing-only questions. Nothing here asks you to diagnose the roof yourself.