Shingle and Flashing Repair
Two of the smallest parts of a roof cause most of its leaks. A shingle the size of a doormat, and a strip of flashing you could roll up and put in a lunch box.
Both are cheap to fix. Both get expensive when they are ignored for a season, because the water under them does not stop at the shingle. It goes into the decking, the insulation, and eventually the ceiling.
Shingle repair in Northport runs $250 to $900 for a typical patch. Flashing repair runs $150 to $450 for a pipe boot and $350 to $1,500 for chimneys, walls, and valleys. Northport Roofing Company does more of this work than anything else, and it is the work we are proudest of, because a good patch on a 15-year-old roof can honestly buy another five years.
Missing and lifted shingles
Three-tab shingles on Northport's older ranches lose tabs in the spring fronts. Architectural shingles hold better but still lift at the edges once the seal strip has aged past year 10 or so.
A missing tab exposes the nails of the course below and the underlayment. That underlayment is a rain screen, not a roof. It will shed water for a few weeks and then start wicking.
A lifted shingle that has not creased can usually be resealed. We lift it carefully, apply roofing cement under the tab, and press it back. Creased shingles get replaced.
Replacing a shingle means breaking the seal on the course above, pulling the nails from the damaged shingle, sliding the new one in, and nailing it under the shingle above so the nails stay covered. Done right you cannot find the repair from the ground. Done wrong, with exposed nails and a smear of black cement, it will leak at the nails within a year.
On a hot day we wait for the shingles to cool before lifting them, because a 140-degree shingle tears. On a cold morning we warm them. Either way the repair takes longer than it looks and is worth doing right once.
Typical cost: $250 to $600 for a patch of up to a bundle of shingles. More if decking needs to come out.
Flashing: chimneys, walls, valleys, and boots
Flashing is the metal that seals a roof to everything that sticks up through it or runs alongside it. Northport has a lot of brick chimneys on the 1960s and 70s houses, and brick chimney flashing is where we spend the most time.
Chimney flashing has two parts: step flashing woven into the shingles, and counterflashing let into the mortar joints and bent down over the step flashing. Over 30 or 40 years the counterflashing pulls out of the mortar and the sealant behind it fails. We cut a new reglet into the mortar, set new counterflashing, and seal it with a polyurethane sealant rated for masonry, not silicone.
Wall flashing where a lower roof meets a second-story wall fails the same way, and the fix is similar, with the siding or brick worked around.
Valleys carry the most water on the roof. On older Northport homes the valley metal has often rusted through under the shingles. We replace the valley metal with painted galvanized or aluminum and re-lay the shingles on both sides.
Pipe boots are the rubber collars around plumbing vents. They split around year 8 to 12 in our heat. We replace them with a new boot, or a lifetime silicone boot that fits over the old one when the base is still sound.
Typical cost: pipe boot $150 to $450, chimney reflash $500 to $1,200, valley rebuild $400 to $1,500, wall flashing $350 to $900.
Matching old shingles
The honest problem with a shingle repair on a 15- to 20-year-old roof is color. The original product may be discontinued, and even if it is not, 15 years of Alabama sun has faded the roof to a shade no new bundle will match.
We get as close as we can. Owens Corning, GAF, and CertainTeed all still make the common colors, and we carry a few bundles of the weathered-wood and charcoal blends that cover most of Northport.
For a repair on the back slope, nobody will ever notice. For a repair on the front slope of a house on a visible street, we tell you up front that the patch will show, and we give you the choice. Some homeowners decide the mismatch is fine for a $400 fix. Some decide a 20-year-old roof with visible patches is a replacement conversation, and we have that one too.
What a small repair costs
Most shingle and flashing repairs in Northport come in between $200 and $900. That includes the inspection, the materials, the repair, and photos of the finished work.
We charge a minimum service visit, so a single pipe boot does not come free, but it also does not come with a sales pitch for a new roof. If we see a second problem while we are up there, we show you the photo and quote it. You decide.
Repairs carry a workmanship warranty against the same spot leaking again.
National cost guides for 2026 put the average roof repair around $1,150. Our Northport average for a shingle or flashing job is well under that, because most of what we fix is one boot, one flashing run, or one patch of tabs, found before it rotted the decking.
Fix the small thing now
Call (205) 555-0199 and describe what you see: a tab in the yard, a stain under the chimney, water in the attic at a vent pipe. Small repairs inside Northport usually get done within the week, often on the first visit.
Mon–Sat 7am–7pm, 24/7 emergency tarping