When a severe thunderstorm batters your tile roof with hail and sends you roof tiles flying the first thing that needs to be done is to stop any future water damage with a temporary repair. If your roof is damaged and leaking water that means you need roof tarps.
Installing a roof tarp on a tile roof is not as easy as a traditional shingled roof. Additional considerations and tools are required.
The first and most important step is always safety. The tile roof needs to be dry, not wet when we walk on it. A wet tile roof can very slippery in the wrong shoes. We make sure our ladders are set up properly and tide off so they do not get blown down.
When we walk on your tile roof to complete temporary repairs we do not want to cause any unnecessary damage. We try to place our feet going in the same direction as the ridge, and make an effort to evenly distribute our weight as much as possible. We try to walk on the bottom three inches of the tile, as this is the portion of your roof tile that is supported by the lapped tile under it. If the roof is an S or barrel-shaped tile type we put our weight evenly on our toe and heal on the high points of two tiles.
The tools we use for tarping a tile roof are Tarps, Double-sided tape, sandbags, heavy objects, nails, and hammers.
If there are broken or missing tiles are on or near the ridge, we will install the tarp over the damaged area, then continue it over the ridge cap so water does not travel under the tarp. This is the preferred method of installation. If the damage is near the bottom or we do not have enough tarp to go up over the ridge, we will need to make sure we get under all the tiles above the damage to secure the top of the tarp.
On a shingled roof we nail the tarp in place using furring strips, but we can not nail a tarp into a tile roof. We can use 2-3 inch wide double sided tape to secure the tarp to the tile. It is best to also weight the tarp down with sandbags or heavy objects to keep the wind from blowing up under it.
We keep all the tiles that we remove. These can be samples you can show to your insurance adjuster and to help the restoration contractor to locate the same, or similar tiles for repair. We take pictures of the damage before installing a roof tarp for our client’s records.