Some of our customers are excellent at do-it-yourself home repairs but there have been times when their efforts have cost them in roof shingle repair. This particular home owner decided to climb up on his roof to straighten out a vent pipe rising from the top of the house. Vent pipes have the important function of releasing plumbing gasses into the atmosphere, away from the house.
For some reason the vent pipe had been installed on an angle and after years of looking at it and feeling annoyed the owner decided to do something about it. The gentleman did a great job of getting the vent pipe to sit vertically, but he managed to tear up some of the surrounding shingles.
He went down to the local hardware store and bought a bucket of roofing tar, thinking this would take care of the problem. Unfortunately, one of our Virginia (VA) thunderstorms came up a few days later and the family ended up with a swimming pool in the basement.
When we were called in to do the roof shingle repair, we actually had to remove a substantial section of the asphalt shingles. You see, when one shingle is damaged or disturbed all the surrounding shingles are affected. We had to pull them all up and carefully integrate new shingles. Once we were done, our repair was absolutely water tight, more so than the rest of the roof. The customer was pleased and resolved to never do anything on the roof again without calling roof shingle repair professionals.