Roof maintenance is essential to keeping your home safe and shielded from the elements. Failure to perform regular maintenance can lead to gradual degradation of the roof structure – which eventually demands a costly makeover and can cause damage to your property. The Bay Area roofing contractors at Century Roof Tile recommend scheduling a regular inspection to ascertain the condition of the roof in anticipation of the usual wear and tear caused by erratic weather conditions and ageing of the roofing materials.

Reinforce your roof every spring and fall to strengthen the structure and prevent leakage and extensive damage in the event of bad weather. The following are expert tips to help get your roof in order so that you can secure your home and avoid the hassle of impromptu Bay Area roofing repair work.

• Remove any debris (sticks, leaves, etc.) from the surface of the roof as these can get stuck on the shingles and cause damage.
• Inspect the flashing and clean out any caulk before resealing.
• Check the joints and chimneys for caulking and seal any spaces to prevent leaking. Check also for cracked mortar and seal any existing spaces.
• Signs of algae and mold are bad for your roof. To prevent growth of mold and algae you can install lead or zinc control zips.
• Replace any damaged shingles with new ones, or contact a Bay Area roofing company for assistance.

Clean your gutter

In the fall season, take time to clean your gutter to prevent clogging of your gutter system. Accumulation of leaves and other debris can prevent the flow of water and cause a back-flow. When the cold season kicks in, this water freezes and damages the roof and gutters.

Trim your trees

Large, heavy branches can cause significant damage to your roof if ignored. Check for trees that lean towards your house and chop off any branches that might fall directly on your roof. Keep in mind that strong winds can cause weak or dead branches to fall, and if the tree is in close proximity to your house, that can spell disaster.

Tree-trimming has another benefit; it serves to minimize the amount of leaves and sticks that build up over time, causing the gutter system to rot in the process.

Consult Bay Area Roofing Experts for a Roof Inspection

For people who don’t have the time to perform these maintenance routines, it helps to hire professionals to do the job for you. Our East Bay roofing contractors are well-trained and have the resources to inspect and perform maintenance to prevent cases of flooding or damage to your home. Contact the team at Century Roof Tile today by calling (510) 780-9489 or via our online contact form.

Your roof is one of the most important aspects of your home because it protects you and your family from the harsh elements. Taking good care of your roof is key in having a long-lasting and solid roof. While some things should most definitely be left to the professionals, here are 5 simple ways to maintain your roof on your own:

1. Clean up debris

Taking the time to identify and remove debris from your roof is important in preventing rot and decay. Make sure to keep your roof clear of leafs, sticks, and trash pieces that might have found their way up there. Note that this check should be performed when your roof is dry and done with the assistance of at least one other person for safety reasons.

2. Remove moss

Moss and mold can soften and damage shingles if left too long. Wash infected shingles gently and scrub away all mossy pieces. Check the integrity of each shingle that appears to have fungus on it and replace or repair them as needed, taking care to leave no soft or broken shingles to expose your roof to the elements.

3. Repair shingles

After storms or strong winds, shingles can become broken without your knowledge. It is a good idea to regularly check your shingles to make sure that they are still in good shape and not in need of repair. If you do spot some broken or cracked shingles during a quick inspection, a local roofing company that specializes in roofing repair should be able to identify and replace them quickly.

4. Repair and clean chimneys and outlets

Chimneys, vents, and outside lighting should also be cleaned and repaired as needed. Power washing is an ideal way to perform this kind of cleaning as it will easily remove grime and reach tricky spots that are hard to find with only a ladder at your disposal.

5. Clean gutters

Gutters should be cleaned regularly to prevent the build-up of garbage and natural debris inside of them. A great way to make the cleaning and repair process easier on yourself is to install covers that keep dirt out. Inspect around the gutters for cracks or broken areas and repair them with caulking as necessary.

Contact Our Bay Area Roofing Contractors for Help

Maintaining your roof throughout the year is the most effective way to ensure that it stays in the best condition possible. In the colder months, rain and accumulation of leafs and twigs can potentially hide roofing problems that are easier to spot in better weather. As the winter months approach, consider enlisting the help of a professional roofing company like Century Roof & Solar to inspect your roof for any possible problems to ensure that your roof is well taken care of. They will be able to give you tips on continuing to care for your home as well as fix any issues that they might find. Visit our page at www.centuryrooftile.com to learn more.

With meteorologists predicting one of the strongest El Niño seasons in history, Bay Area roofing contractors recommend preparing for the worst. El Niño is likely to bring heavy rain and powerful winds, both of which will damage roofing throughout the Bay Area and beyond. If you’ve been ignoring home maintenance or if you haven’t had your roof inspected for some time it is a good idea to check for problems before heavy storms arrive this winter.

Understanding El Niño

El Niño is a phenomenon that occurs when the surface water in the eastern Pacific Ocean is significantly warmer than normal. This leads to heavier than normal rainfall in the western part of the United States, including the Bay Area. In many cases, this precipitation comes with damaging winds and can cause mudslides and flooding in areas that are not well equipped to handle heavy flows of storm water.

Getting Ready for the Rain

In anticipation of winter storms, prudent Bay Area residents are already preparing their homes. If you live in this area, now is the time to clean your gutters and repair any problems with your roofing system. If you have been living with small leaks through the past 4 very dry years you won’t want to ignore them any longer, as your problems may compound themselves with strong winds and rain.

Although you may be able to make some repairs on your own, most roof repairs should be left to the experts who know the best ways to patch a leak or when more than a small patch is necessary for the long term health of your roofing system and home that it protects. Call a roof leak repair Bay Area company to make sure any leaks are fixed properly. In addition to professional experience and training, some roofers have useful tools that would be prohibitively expensive to a home owner such as thermal leak detection using infrared technology.

Take Advantage of Local Roofing Contractors Experience and Advanced Tools to Detect and Repair Leaks

The Century Roof and Solar team has the experience, knowledge, and tools to prepare your home or commercial property for the approaching winter storms. Call us at (888) 233-7548 or contact us online to get the help you need to protect your property and prevent damaging mildew, mold and decay from infiltrating your roof.

As August comes to a close, Bay Area residents are busy grilling, swimming and enjoying a few brief moments of quiet while the kids are getting ready to head back to school. Very few homeowners have time to spend dwelling on their gutters.

Even if you recently noticed a leak in a spout or a warped area on your roof, you may not feel compelled to do something about it right away. After all, it’s dry and placid, and the harsher storms and winds of late fall and winter seem distant.

However, roofing contractors would stress that identifying problems with your gutters is extremely important, and not just because preventative maintenance can help you catch and reverse roofing water engineering problems before they cause irreversible damage. Leaky gutters can also lead to the formation of unpleasant problems, such as mildew, mold and bacteria, which can get into your roof, your attic and the walls of your home, in turn affecting air quality and the useful life of the materials that you rely on to keep your home safe and comfortable. Mold can even indirectly lead to structural problems and create risks of roof collapse.

Leaky gutters can also lead to flooding on your property. If your home is surrounded with trees or flower beds that you have spent time or money to plant and maintain, and your gutters are not draining properly, a significant downpour could wipe out your topiary and cost you thousands of dollars to replace and seriously impact the appearance of your home.

Beyond simply diverting water away from your plantings, structure, and foundation, shiny new gutter installations can really have a drastic effect on your home’s curb appeal. Old dirty, rusty, or dented gutters are one of the most prominent features of your home’s structure as viewed from the street.

Aesthetics aside – who wants to look at dingy, corroded gutters?

Installing new gutters might not seem like glamorous or urgent work, but preventative maintenance can save you money and frustration and make your home more robust and resilient. Call the Century Roof & Tile roofing contractors at (888) 233-7548 today for insight into your gutter repair and maintenance needs. You can also contact us online right here from our contact page.

Neglecting to complete seasonal maintenance on your Bay Area home’s gutters can lead to significant future repairs. If water is unable to flow freely away from your home, structural necessities, like the roof and foundation, become vulnerable to water damage. Review the following steps to ensure your roof gutters stay properly maintained.

Inspecting and cleaning your gutters primarily occurs at the same time in the following steps:

• Remove leaves and debris from the gutter prior to running water through it. Evident by a lack of flow, severe clogs may indicate that larger pieces of debris are stuck within the gutter, or that the slope of the gutter is off. Always remove debris from the downspout by using a hose or plumber’s snake.
• Check for visible leaks on the outside of the gutter and water running down the wall. The culprit may be loose spikes, hangers, or lack of sealant along seams. Inspect gutters for rust and holes, as these must be repaired as soon as possible.

Perform timely repairs by completing the steps above will help you catch problems before a roofing repair or gutter replacement is needed. When unsure about your ability to complete repairs or gutter installations, work with professional roofing contractors to get the job done.

Have your Gutters Repaired by the Leading East Bay Roofing Company

If your gutters need repair, contact the #1 roof leak repair team at Century Roof and Solar today at 1-888-233-7548.

The Bay Area doesn’t get many ice storms, blizzards, sleet and other extreme winter weather. But roofing contractors in the Bay Area know that the season is nothing to mess around with. In fact, the winter can be quite traumatic for your roof, thanks to temperature and moisture fluctuations, heavy winds, and other unpredictable seasonal factors.

If you live in an area where the temperature occasionally dips below freezing, protect against ice dams, which can ruin your gutters and ravage your roof. Also: winterize your pipes and sprinklers, so that water doesn’t freeze in them and create cracks and leaks.

In addition, add insulation to your attic; inspect for broken, missing, warped, discolored, or otherwise “problematic” roof tiles; and do some pre-winter tree trimming. If you haven’t already done so, clean your gutters of the gunk, leaves, and debris that accumulated during summer/fall.

Professional Roof and Gutter Services

Even if your roof looks “okay,” you can still benefit tremendously from talking to a roofing repair consultant with Century Roof & Solar to make sure that your protection is adequate. After all, it’s so much simpler and more cost effective to manage roofing problems before they become big problems – and to do so while the weather is still relatively pleasant.

Call 1-888-233-7548 or email the roofing contractors at Century Roof & Solar today for thorough, ethical, and useful guidance about your winterization preparation.

Most homeowners know that they need to “take care of” the home’s core structural elements — the roof, the foundation, the windows, the electrical, the HVAC system, etc. But you also must be mindful of your gutters.Even though our climate is not as severe as, say New England’s; the Bay Area gets its fair share of blustery, wet, and wooly weather. You need reliable rain gutters to prevent water from pooling, leaking, and creating the conditions for mold and structural damage.

When gutters break down or overflow due to clogging or mechanical problems, the water can cascade in surprising, yet devastating pathways. For instance, let’s say a clog forms in a gutter above your rec room. Water spillage driven by this constraint, over time, could saturate the wood underneath, giving rise to mold. The decayed, desiccated wood then becomes a target for termites or other pests.

Depending on where this “break down” occurs, you might not even notice the tell-tale signs, such peeling paint, musty odor, missing shingles or wall panels, discoloration, etc., until the structure actually fails or an electrical fire goes off and burns down your house.

That sounds like an extreme scenario, and it’s unlikely. But we want to illustrate vividly why you need to mind your gutter system and to do the installation and maintenance the right way.

Even if you are a hardcore “do it yourselfer,” consult with licensed, experienced experts before installing your gutters. The last thing you want is to spend days of hard labor, only to screw up the installation in some subtle but pivotal way.

For top-caliber assistance with your Bay Area roofing repair needs, get in touch with the team here at Century Roof and Solar for a free estimate. Our reputable professionals are standing by to help make your job simpler.

1. Get the gunk out of the gutters!

Flotsam and jetsam have a gnarly way of accumulating in our Bay Area gutters. Everything from birds’ nests to leaves and pine needles to kids toys can muck up gutters and ultimately lead to problems like leaking, mold, and misalignment. If you live in a chillier part of town, ice and snow can actually form on the debris and warp the gutters, causing additional stresses on your home and roof. So, clean the gutters now!

2. Identify insulation inefficiencies.

Maybe you currently own a home with single pane windows, and you’re draining a tremendous amount of energy heating your home during the winter and cooling it during the hot months. Switching over to double pane glass could be a simple cost effective fix.

Or maybe your furnace’s duct work warped due to years of your “forgetting” to do the maintenance… or perhaps due to other quirky factors, such as an earthquake or an infestation of voles.

The point is: to understand how best to optimize your winterizing dollars (and time), you need to measure what’s working and what’s not working and develop a plan accordingly.

For instance, if your insulation is basically fine, don’t waste time or money improving it! Conversely, if your duct work is misaligned – and you don’t realize it – the misalignment can lead to the accumulation of moisture residue, molds, and other problems you’ll have to fix down the line. To parse what “stuff” is important, you may want to get in touch with the experienced team at Century Roof & Solar. We can provide a free consultation to help you figure out what to focus on (and what you might be able to ignore).

3. Fix that furnace!

The time to find out that your furnace is not working – or emanating some noxious or disgusting smell – is not the dead of January, when all your local HVAC technicians are busy and/or unavailable due to a local blizzard or other nasty winter weather event. Your furnace should be cleaned and tuned up every year, anyway, to ensure that the filters, wiring, and other components are all up to standard.

4. The “DIY” route can lead to surprising costs, time sinks, and frustration.

You may “not want to bother” consulting with a professional team about your winterizing because you don’t anticipate any problems. But your home is dynamic, and you may not have the experience or tools to test everything effectively. Get connected with the team at Century Roof & Solar today for a free consultation about your winterizing needs.

image credit: http://www.c21larrymiller.com/winterizing-your-home-tip-1/

But you owe to yourself and your family to maintain your home. The time to clean your gutters is now. Just 15 to 20 minutes of maintenance can help you side step extremely expensive home repairs down the line and protect your most precious material investment against the ravages of water damage, mold, structural instability, infestations, and so forth.

Gutter Cleaning Tactics

1. Identify problem areas.

Leaking gutters can allow water to overflow and cause structural problems, moisture damage to wood, and even cracks in the foundation itself. Once these problems begin, the elements will exacerbate them. Water can freeze in cracks in the winter and make them worse, for instance. Gutter problems can also crack driveways, causes sidewalks to become slippery, destroy landscaping, and invite nasty insects and bees to take up residence on your property.

2. Wear appropriate clothing, and be smart.

Wear suitable gloves, and avoid hazards, like power lines and wasp nests.

3. Trace a methodical path from one end of your house to the other.

Use a hose and gloves to empty out full gutters. Empty the hose down all spouts to clear away all debris. Do not stand or sit on the roof – work from your ladder. Replace lose bolts or gutter spikes as you go. Afterwards, install gutter guards under your spouts to prevent leaves from building up near the spout exits and causing overflow.

If you’re confused — or if you’d like help from experienced professionals — talk to the team at Century Roof and Solar. We can provide a customized gutter cleaning solution. Connect with us for a free consultation today at www.centuryroofandsolar.com, or call us at 510-780-9489.

Unless you live in a dwarf house or you are a giant, you are likely going to need a ladder.

Adhere to the many (and many crucial) rules of ladder safety. Avoid wearing inappropriate footwear (e.g. flip flops, sandals, easy slipping shoes, et cetera) follow all safety instructions on the ladder itself. Avoid putting too much weight on ladder, standing too high (creates an imbalance), placing the ladder on a dirty surface, or getting up on a ladder in the middle of a rainstorm – particularly a thunder and lightning storm.

Hidden Risks, Surprising Resources  

Your gutters might just be full of fluffy leaves or pine needles or other soft materials. But you never know. The edges of gutters can be sharp, and they could cut your hands. Nails and other sharp debris blown onto the roof can accumulate in gutters and pose other hazards. You could even discover – horror of horrors – a dead bird or animal in the gutters. So wear gloves and use tools, like garden shovels, to scoop out the debris.

To avoid the whole “risking your neck on a ladder and combing through gunky mulch with your bare hands” thing – what we just talked about – you can utilize homemade ad-hoc tools or even purchase special gutter cleaning solutions at your local hardware store.

One intrepid blogger described a contraption that he built that turns a leaf blower into a gutter cleaner by attaching vacuum tubing to the blower to blast air through the gutter and knock out the leaves and debris. This is a nice fix to reduce ladder work or possibly eliminate it completely.

Watch That Back!

Lastly, pay attention to your own physical needs. Avoid straining your back (particularly the lower back); maintaining an awkward posture for an extended amount of time; working in extreme weather conditions (very hot, rainy, cold, etcetera); and doing extensive ladder work without a spotter nearby to help you if you get into trouble.

To avoid the hassle of cleaning your own gutters, connect with the Bay Area roofing professionals at Century Roof and Solar. For over 15 years, our team has won a reputation as the most trusted name in roofing, and we are proud to be the Bay Area’s leader in lightweight roof systems and gutters.

Call our team at 888-233-748 to get a free roofing quote – we serve the entire East Bay Area –