Roof Red Flags: What a Walkthrough Will Not Tell You About an Okanagan Home

You can tell a lot about a house from the driveway. You cannot tell much about the roof. The things that decide whether it lasts another fifteen years or needs replacing the spring after you move in are almost all invisible from the street, and several of them are invisible from the roof too. They are in the attic.

Here is what we look for on a roof inspection in Vernon, Coldstream and around the valley, and why “it looks fine” and “the seller says it is ten years old” are two of the least useful things you can know about a roof.

How many roofs are on the house?

Ask about a roof and you will hear its age. Ask how many layers are up there and you will usually get a blank look. Laying a second layer of asphalt shingles over the first (an over-roof) has been common practice for decades, and on older homes in Vernon’s established neighbourhoods and out toward Coldstream we still find them regularly.

An over-roof is a problem for several reasons. The new shingles follow every hump and curl in the old ones, so they do not seal flat and they wear faster. The roof deck cannot be seen or repaired, so any soft or rotten sheathing stays there. Snow load in the north end of the valley is real, and a second layer adds weight the framing may not have been sized for. And when the roof finally does need replacing, both layers have to come off, which doubles the tear-off and disposal.

We look at the edges. A double layer shows at the eave and rake as a thick, stepped edge. Inside the attic, a second set of nail tips through the sheathing tells the same story. Do not assume a roof is a single layer because the listing says “new roof”. Ask, and then have someone look.

Flashing, and the two kinds that matter most

Shingles keep rain off. Flashing keeps it out. Most roof leaks we trace end at a piece of flashing, or where flashing should have been.

Step flashing is the series of small overlapping metal pieces woven in with the shingles where a roof meets a wall: at a dormer, a second storey, a chimney. Each shingle course gets its own piece. The shortcut is to run a single long strip of metal and caulk it, which works until the caulk fails, usually within a few summers of Okanagan UV. We look for continuous flashing where step flashing should be, and for sealant doing a job metal should be doing.

Kickout flashing is the small piece at the bottom of that roof-to-wall joint that turns the water out into the gutter instead of letting it run down the face of the wall. Missing kickouts are one of the most common defects we find and one of the most damaging, because the water goes straight down behind the siding. On a stucco house the first sign is a dark streak or a soft patch below the roofline. By the time it is visible, the sheathing behind it is often rotten.

Chimneys get their own check: counterflashing let into the mortar joints rather than caulked to the brick, and a cricket (a small diverter roof) behind any chimney wide enough to need one.

Attic ventilation, and why it matters more here than you think

A roof is a system, and the half of it you cannot see from outside is the attic. Ventilation is meant to keep the attic close to outside temperature: cool air in low at the soffits, warm air out high at the ridge or through roof vents.

When it does not work, two things happen. In our hot summers an attic without enough intake or exhaust cooks, and shingles age from underneath as well as above. In winter, warm moist air from the house that gets into the attic and cannot leave condenses on the cold underside of the sheathing. We see it as frost in January, as dark staining and mould on the sheathing, as rusted nail tips and delaminated plywood.

The causes are usually simple. Soffit vents painted or insulated over. Insulation blown right to the eave with no baffles, blocking the intake. Exhaust vents with no intake to feed them, so they pull heated air up out of the house instead. Bathroom fans venting into the attic instead of through the roof. We check the balance between intake and exhaust, the condition of the sheathing, and where the moisture is coming from.

Ice damming

Ice dams form when heat escaping into the attic melts the snow on the upper roof, and the meltwater runs down to the cold eave and freezes into a ridge. Water backs up behind the ridge and works under the shingles. Vernon and Coldstream get enough snow and enough cold spells for this to matter, and more so up the hill.

The fix is almost never heat cable. It is air sealing the attic floor, adequate insulation, ventilation that works, and an ice and water membrane at the eaves under the shingles. On an inspection we look for the evidence: stained or lifted shingles in the first metre above the eave, water staining on the inside of exterior walls near the ceiling, and the tell-tale gap in the insulation around a pot light or the attic hatch.

Age is not the same as remaining life

A shingle roof of a given age can have ten years left or one. What decides it is the shingle quality, the ventilation underneath, the slope and orientation (a south-facing slope on a Vernon hillside takes far more UV than the north side of the same roof), and how the details were done.

We look at the shingles themselves for granule loss, curling and cupping at the edges, cracking, exposed or lifted nails, and brittleness. We look at the rubber boots around plumbing vents, which are often cracked long before the shingles fail. Then we tell you what we see and what it means for you as a buyer: this roof is in the first half of its life, this one is in the last quarter and you should budget for it, this one needs a roofer’s quote before you remove subjects.

What a walkthrough cannot do

A twenty-minute viewing with a realtor happens from the ground and from inside the finished rooms. Nobody opens the attic hatch. A pre-purchase home inspection takes 3.5 to 4 hours on a typical house precisely because the roof, the attic, the crawlspace and the mechanical systems are where the money is.

If you are buying in Vernon or Coldstream and the roof is the one thing you are unsure about, we can look at the roof on its own or as part of a full home inspection. Either way you get photographs, plain language and a walkthrough on site, so you know what you are looking at before the report lands.

Talk to us before subjects come off

Tell us the address, the building type and your deadline, and we will tell you honestly what we can do and when. Every inspection is carried out personally by Vin McConnachie, Consumer Protection BC licence #78731, and every report comes with a walkthrough on site so you hear the findings before you read them. Call or text (250) 212-4025, or book an inspection online.

We look at your home with our heads so you can look at it with your heart.

Roof Inspections

Finding out what is happening on a roof you cannot see: covering, flashing, drainage and visible structure, photographed and reported.