The Few and the Fearless: A Blog About Roofers

After a storm or strong wind damages your roof, it can be tempting to crawl up on the ladder and try to fix your shingles yourself. While simple repairs - such as a loose shingle or a gutter that's fallen out of place - might be easily fixable, most repairs need professional roofers to tackle the job. Outside of the simple convenience of not having to deal with the problem yourself, what are the other reasons to hire out these issues to roof contractors?

Safety

Above all else, the number one reason you should never attempt to fix your roof yourself is the possibility of injury or even death. Every year, emergency rooms treat 164,000 injuries from ladder-related injuries, while 300 people die. This shows that one of the least-safe activities you can possibly do as a homeowner is crawl up a ladder, especially one that reaches 15 feet or more into the air, and climb onto your roof. And if there's already damage to the roof to begin with, you're just asking for more issues.

Equipment

Fixing a shingle on your roof is a lot different than patching some drywall in your family room. You'll need specialized tools to complete the project, which are both hard to find, and expensive once you do find them. Instead of forking over a bunch of money to buy tools that will only be used once every few years - more than you would pay roofers to simply do the job in the first place - it's easier to contract the job out to people who are already prepared and save yourself the headache.

Warranties

New homes have some kind of warranty on their new builds, which means you should call them immediately if you have any kind of issues related to roofs. But even if you have an older home, you may still be covered by a limited warranty of some kind. If you try to tackle the DIY job yourself and something goes wrong, you'll end up nullifying the warranty and spending money to fix the original problem, and whatever other issues may arise in the future. It's always best to let professional roofers handle your problems, at the very least, because they're covered if something goes wrong.

If you do have urgent roof repairs, contact local roofers to come out and help you. They will be able to get the job done quickly and safely.