Should You Repair or Replace Your Roof?

Repair, if the damage is local, the deck under it is sound, and your shingle can still be matched. Replace when the failure is spread across the roof rather than sitting in one place. Most homeowners expect the deciding factor to be the size of the damage, and it usually is not: the question that settles it most often is whether your shingle is still in production, because a repair that cannot be matched is not much of a repair. Arrowhead Roofing has repaired far more northeast Oklahoma roofs than we have replaced since 1987, and we will tell you when a repair is the right answer.

Note: this is a general guide to how the decision is normally made. Every roof is different, and the only way to answer it for yours is for somebody to get on it and look. Nothing here is a recommendation about a specific roof or a specific insurance claim.

Five conditions decide it, and they are worth going through in this order.

The Short Answer

A leak is not the same thing as a failed roof, and conflating the two is how homeowners end up buying a roof they did not need.

This company’s own writing has put it the same way for decades and it has not stopped being true: not necessarily. Leaks can result from flashings that have come loose or from a section of the roof system being damaged. A complete roof system failure is a different animal, it is generally irreversible, and it comes from age, from the wrong material for the building, or from how it was installed.

So the useful question is not “how bad is it.” It is “is this one place, or is this everywhere.”

Nobody Publishes a Threshold, and That Is Deliberate

Worth knowing before you go looking for one, because a number would be easier and it does not exist.

The National Roofing Contractors Association’s assessment work does not set a damage count or a percentage at which a roof stops being repairable. It frames repair against replacement as an economic comparison: the cost of the repair, its expected service life, and what remains of the roof’s life, weighed against the cost of replacing it now.

That means anyone quoting you a rule, a percentage or a magic number of damaged shingles is describing their own practice rather than a standard. There is nothing wrong with a rule of thumb. There is something wrong with presenting one as an industry threshold.

The Question That Usually Decides It

Not the damage. The product.

An asphalt shingle line does not stay in production forever, and colours within a line come and go faster than the lines themselves. Once yours is gone, a repair means putting a shingle that is close on a roof of shingles that are not, and how close depends on what still exists.

Andy Anderson at Arrowhead is blunt about how that gets abused: “We really try to match as best we can so that people don’t know that’s a repair. Some guys don’t care. They’ll put a black shingle on a gray roof or a tan roof because they want the customer to re-roof.”

A deliberately bad match is a sales technique, and it is worth knowing it exists before somebody uses it on you.

When a shingle genuinely is discontinued, that is not the end of the conversation and it can work in your favour on a claim. What if my shingle is discontinued and cannot be matched? covers the documented route, including the manufacturer’s discontinued product letter. And if you do not know how old your roof is, how old is my roof, and can it still be repaired? is where to start.

When a Repair Is the Wrong Answer

Sometimes a roof cannot be repaired correctly, and the reason is in the existing installation rather than in the damage.

A real example from one of our own jobs. A previous crew had installed the shingles spread too far apart, so the exposure was wrong across the roof. Putting the damaged area back correctly would have exposed the nail line of the course below it, which is a leak waiting to happen. Our crew brought it to Andy rather than covering it up: “they’d be showing me, hey, if we do this, this is what it’s going to look like, is that okay? And I said, no, that’s not okay.”

That roof went to a full tear-off, not because the storm damage warranted one, but because the roof underneath could not accept a correct repair. It is a rare finding and it is exactly the kind of thing that only turns up when somebody actually gets on the roof.

The Other Direction, and We Say It Too

The version of this page that only warns about contractors overselling is a dishonest page, because the same person has to be willing to say the opposite.

Andy says it on camera on a storm job, looking at a roof a homeowner hoped was totalled: “I don’t know if there’s enough to warrant replacement on this.”

That is the sentence a homeowner least wants to hear and most needs to. A roof with three damaged shingles is a roof with three damaged shingles, whatever the weather did to the neighbourhood, and there is no version of this trade in which pretending otherwise ends well.

What Changes the Answer

Three situations tip a borderline roof one way or the other.

How much life is left

A repair on a roof with fifteen years left is an investment. The same repair on a roof with two years left buys two years and gets thrown away. That is the economic comparison in one sentence, and how long does a roof last? covers what the realistic number is in a hail market.

Whether the roof has been layered

A roof carrying a previous layover is harder to repair well and cannot be layered again in this state. The state amendment adopted at OAC 748:20 prohibits another application of asphalt shingles where one already exists, so the replacement route is a full tear-off. Can you put a new roof over an old one? covers it.

Whether it is a storm claim

On a claim the question is scoped by the carrier rather than by preference, and the terms of the policy decide how the roof is paid for. That is a separate subject with its own answer: does homeowners insurance cover roof replacement in Oklahoma?

How the Decision Actually Gets Made on a Roof

Less mysterious than it sounds, and you should expect to see all four steps.

• Photograph before going up. Every side and corner from the ground, so pre-existing conditions can be told apart from new damage.
• Find the boundary of the problem. Not just where the leak shows inside, which is often a long way from where the water gets in.
• Check the shingle itself. Product, exposure and whether that colour is still available, because that is the constraint everything else runs into.
• Go over the photographs with you, off the roof. Then a straight answer, including when the answer is that there is not enough here to justify a replacement.

Related Questions

How do I find out how old my roof is?

There are several ways and none of them requires paperwork you probably do not have. How old is my roof, and can it still be repaired? covers dating it and what age means for repairability.

What if the shingle is not made any more?

That is a documented basis for full replacement rather than a spot repair, and most homeowners have never heard of it. What if my shingle is discontinued and cannot be matched? explains the letter that proves it.

If it does need replacing, how long will that take?

Most standard homes are a single day, and the calendar around it is longer than the work. How long does a roof replacement take? covers both clocks.

Is there anything between a repair and a replacement?

There is a third operation in the code, and on an asphalt shingle roof in Oklahoma it is essentially off the table. Roof repair, roof recover and roof replacement: what is the difference? covers why.

See Also

The two answers that pair with this one are what a realistic service life looks like here, and what actually drives the cost if it does need replacing.