Roof Repair in the Tulsa Metro, From Our Jenks Shop
Wind here pulls shingles off at speeds most people would call an ordinary thunderstorm. We find what moved, fix it, and show you the photos.
Sixty Miles an Hour Is Enough to Take Shingles Off
On August 7, 2018, a thunderstorm over Sperry measured 52 knots. That is 60 miles an hour. The storm survey recorded snapped tree limbs and shingles blown off the roof of a home. Nobody in Sperry would have called that the storm of the decade.
That is the part homeowners here get wrong about wind. People wait for a tornado siren before they think about the roof, and meanwhile the ordinary June thunderstorm is the one that lifted the edge of their shingles and broke the seal strip underneath. A shingle that has lost its seal looks fine from the driveway. It flaps in the next wind, drives the nail head through the mat, and starts letting water past within a season or two.
We do roof repair out of the shop at 508 E Main St in Jenks, which puts every town we serve inside about half an hour. Tulsa and Broken Arrow are ten minutes up the road. Sapulpa, Bixby and Glenpool are closer than that.
The Wind Events That Actually Removed Shingles Here
These are not generic warnings. Each one is a logged National Weather Service storm survey from a reporting point inside our service area, and in every case the survey specifically recorded shingles or roofing leaving a building.
- Sapulpa, July 14, 2016, 85 knots. Roughly 98 miles an hour. The survey reads that the wind "blew much of the roof off of a home." That is the most severe confirmed roof-damage wind event anywhere in the eighteen towns we cover.
- Broken Arrow, July 14, 2016, 65 knots. "Snapped numerous large tree limbs, blew shingles off the roofs of homes, and damaged privacy fencing." Broken Arrow took a second confirmed shingle-loss event on August 6, 2017.
- Claremore, June 17, 2023, 65 knots. The survey records that the wind "removed the majority of shingles from the west side of a roof."
- Bixby, June 17, 2023, 61 knots. "Snapped numerous large tree limbs, and blew shingles from the roofs of homes." Bixby also had roof damage logged on April 26 and July 14 of 2016.
- Glenpool, July 27, 2022, 61 knots. "Damaged the roof of a home, blew a small metal shed across the road, and snapped large tree limbs."
- Skiatook, July 10, 2021, 56 knots. "Snapped large tree limbs and blew shingles off of a roof."
Read that list by wind speed and the pattern is hard to miss. The top of it is a 98 mile an hour outlier. The bottom of it is 64 to 70 miles an hour, and the record shows winds like that somewhere in this metro nearly every year.
Where the Water Is Actually Getting In
A stain on the ceiling is almost never directly below the hole. Water runs down the underside of the decking until it finds a seam, so roof leak detection is most of the job and the patch is the easy part. When we get on a roof in Tulsa or Owasso with a leak call, these are the places we look first.
Flashing, which fails before the shingles do
The metal around a chimney, a sidewall or a skylight expands and contracts every day of an Oklahoma summer. The sealant behind it gives up years before the field of the roof wears out. Roof flashing repair and chimney flashing repair are the two things we replace most often, and on an older Midtown Tulsa house with a masonry chimney it is nearly always the chimney.
Valleys, where all the water goes at once
Where two slopes meet, every gallon off both planes funnels into one channel. One cracked or lifted shingle in a valley can put more water into an attic in an hour than a missing shingle out in the open field will in a month. Roof valley repair is worth doing properly rather than caulking.
Vents and pipe boots, on a timer
The rubber collar around a plumbing vent is the shortest-lived part of the whole assembly. Oklahoma sun splits them, and once split they feed water straight down the pipe into the ceiling below. Roof vent repair is cheap and we would rather replace a boot now than the drywall later.
Decking, when the leak has been going a while
If the plywood under the shingles has gone soft, new shingles have nothing solid to hold a nail. Roof decking repair cuts the bad sheathing out and puts sound wood back. This is the step people skip to save money and then pay for twice.
Hail bruising, which does not leak yet
Hail damage repair is a different animal from wind. A hail strike knocks the protective granules off and bruises the mat without opening it. The roof does not leak that week. It leaks after the next hot summer finishes what the hail started, by which time the claim deadline may have passed.
What We Repair, and When We Tell You Not to Bother
We repair asphalt shingle roofs, metal roofs, and flat and low-slope roofs, which in this metro usually means a porch addition or a downtown commercial building. Commercial roof repair on shops, offices and rental property is steady work for us and we schedule it around your hours rather than ours. If water already reached the ceiling, insulation or drywall, roof water damage repair is part of the same job, because fixing the roof and leaving the mess inside is not a finished job.
Wind damage repair after a storm is the bulk of what we do between June and September. Roof maintenance services, meaning somebody looking at it once a year, is the cheapest thing on this page and the one almost nobody asks for.
Sometimes the honest answer is that a repair is throwing money at a roof that is finished. A twenty-year-old roof with granule loss across every slope does not need a patch over the one spot that happens to be leaking. We will tell you that, show you why on the photos, and you can decide whether to talk about roof replacement instead. If the damage came from a storm, the insurance claim is usually the next conversation. If water is coming in right now, that is emergency service and the number below rings around the clock.
Think You Have a Leak?
We will come out, find where the water is actually getting in, and tell you whether it is a repair or something bigger. The inspection is free either way.