Roof Repair in Santa Monica, CA

Santa Monica's housing stock is older than its image: streets of 1920s and 1930s Spanish and revival houses north of Montana and through the mid-city, bungalows and courtyard buildings, postwar houses toward the east end, and flat-roofed sections everywhere the architecture wanted a clean line against the sky. The ocean is three minutes from most of it and sits inside every roof's aging curve.

Marine air is the author here. Flashing and fasteners corrode on a coastal clock, damp mornings keep shaded slopes wet for hours, and the flat sections that this city's architecture loves hold their ponds longer than they should. The failures are rarely dramatic; they are patient, and patience is what makes them expensive when they are read late. A leak dated early in Santa Monica is usually a metal story, small and fixable. The same leak read two winters later has had time to become a wood story.

Common Santa Monica roof problems: corroded flashing at walls and chimneys, rusted fasteners backing out of tile and comp alike, ponding flat sections behind parapets, tile underlayment on the older stock, drain and scupper details that clog with coastal debris.