Leaky Skylights and Cracked Tiles - Here's What We Fix

Skylights and tile roofs are a great combination - until they're not. When the flashing around a skylight starts to fail or the seal deteriorates, water gets in fast. And once it's in, it doesn't just stay at the skylight. It tracks along the underlayment, soaks into the decking, and shows up as a stain on your ceiling that's usually pretty far from where the actual leak started.

That's exactly the kind of problem we deal with regularly. The skylight flashing separation you can see here is a classic example - debris packed into the gap, old sealant cracked and pulling away, and tiles nearby showing wear that makes the whole system vulnerable. Left alone, that's not a minor fix anymore. It becomes a wood rot situation.

On a job like this, we pull the tiles, inspect everything underneath, and replace the underlayment before anything goes back on. Fresh underlayment is the part most homeowners never see, but it's what actually keeps your home dry. Skipping it - or just patching over old, dried-out felt - is how roofs that get 'repaired' end up leaking again six months later. We don't do that.

With tile roofing specifically, the tiles themselves are often fine. Concrete and clay tile can last decades. But the underlayment beneath them has a much shorter lifespan, and cracked or slipped tiles create entry points that accelerate that wear. We assess both - what can be salvaged and reset, and what needs to go. The goal is always to do the right scope of work, not the biggest one.

If your tile roof has been giving you trouble - whether it's a leaky skylight, cracked tiles, or just water showing up somewhere it shouldn't - that's worth getting looked at sooner rather than later. Water damage compounds quickly, and catching it early almost always costs less.