The Morning After
Dry for eight months, then the first real rain rolls through the Inland Empire, and the next morning the phone is nothing but leak calls from Rancho Cucamonga to Riverside to Ontario. Here is the thing about that first rain: it does not cause the problems. It finds them. Everything summer broke, the first storm bills you for.
Number One: Pipe Seals
Every vent pipe coming through your roof has a rubber seal around it, and those seals are good for roughly two to five years. A SoCal summer cooks them. They dry, they crack, and a cracked pipe seal is the single most common first-rain leak I see. They cost almost nothing to replace. The drywall repair from ignoring one costs plenty. If your seals have been up there through a hot summer or three, get them looked at.
Number Two: Cracked and Slipped Tiles
Summer wind events break tiles and shove them out of line, and a displaced tile is a funnel pointed at your underlayment. From the ground, look for tiles that sit different from their neighbors, corners popped up, lines that stopped being straight. We wrote about what crowded and shifted tiles do in our roof valleys post.
Number Three: Granules
On shingle roofs: if your gutters and downspout splash zones are full of what looks like coarse sand, your shingles are shedding their armor. Shiny patches where the fiberglass mat shows through mean the sun is already through the coating, and rain is next. Full story in the granule loss post.
An Hour in September
A pre-season inspection takes us less than an hour, and most of what we find is small: seals, a handful of tiles, a flashing that needs attention. Small in September. Not small in January.