Tile & Shingle Roof Repair

Tile lasts. What is under it does not.

Concrete and clay tile in this climate can go 50 years or more — we routinely walk 1980s tile that is still perfectly serviceable. The underlayment beneath it is the actual waterproofing, and a standard 30-lb felt installed with that tile has a service life closer to 20–30 years. That mismatch is the single most common reason a Carlsbad or Encinitas tile roof starts leaking while looking essentially new from the street.

So a tile repair is really an underlayment repair with tile lifted off the top. We stack the tile aside in order, cut out the failed felt or synthetic, lap new material properly into the existing courses uphill, rebuild the metal at any valley or wall, and re-set the tile with matching stock. Broken pieces get replaced; the rest goes back where it came from.

Cracked and slipped tile matters for a second reason: every walked-on cracked tile and every slipped course exposes the felt underneath to direct UV, which ages it far faster than the shaded field around it. Replacing a handful of broken tiles is genuinely cheap preventive work.

Shingle roofs on the coast and inland

Architectural composition shingle typically delivers 20–30 years in San Diego County, and where it fails early it usually fails for one of two regional reasons. On the coast, in Oceanside, Carlsbad, Encinitas, Del Mar and Solana Beach, salt air corrodes ridge and valley metal and the fasteners in it, and marine-layer damp on north slopes grows moss that lifts tabs and holds water against the mat.

Inland — Escondido, San Marcos, Poway, Ramona, El Cajon, Santee — heat is the driver. Sustained roof-surface temperatures cook the volatiles out of the asphalt, mats shrink and cup at the corners, granules shed into the gutters, and the shingle stops laying flat. Cupped tabs let wind-driven rain under the course, which is why an inland shingle roof often starts leaking in a storm rather than in steady rain.

We repair by course, not by smear: pull the affected shingles and their nails, replace any damaged underlayment, install new shingles woven correctly into the surrounding courses, and re-nail properly rather than face-nailing over the top. Ridge caps and valleys get rebuilt where the metal has gone.

Matching tile and shingle you can actually get

Tile profiles get discontinued, and clay especially fades over decades, so a brand-new piece can sit obviously bright in a weathered field. We source matching or closest-available stock from local salvage and supply yards, and where an exact match does not exist we pull sound tile from a low-visibility area — behind a chimney, a rear slope — to patch the visible field and put the near-match where nobody sees it.

For shingles we match profile, weight and color line as closely as the manufacturer's current run allows and tell you honestly how visible the difference will be before you approve the work. On a 20-year-old roof there is always some difference; the question is whether it is on the street elevation.

When a tile or shingle roof is done

Signs a repair is still the right call: leaks at specific points, sound decking, intact felt away from the failure, tile that is largely unbroken. Signs it is not: bare felt visible across large areas, three or more unrelated leaks in one rainy season, gutters full of granules with cupping across whole slopes, or a tile roof whose underlayment is brittle everywhere you lift a tile.

We do not sell replacements. When that is what the roof needs, we document it with photos so you can get replacement bids knowing exactly what you are buying — and we will tell you when a targeted repair can reasonably buy you another few seasons.

What moves the price

Repair area size

How much tile has to come off and how much underlayment gets replaced.

Tile availability

Discontinued profiles need sourcing; salvage matching adds time, not usually much cost.

Valleys and walls

Rebuilding valley metal or a wall transition is more work than a field patch.

Height and slope

Second-story and steep tile need extra staging and careful loading.

Where we do this work

Tile and shingle work makes up most of what we do county-wide: coastal Carlsbad, Encinitas, Oceanside, Del Mar and Solana Beach, inland Escondido, San Marcos, Vista, Poway and Rancho Bernardo, plus the city of San Diego, East County and the South Bay.