Porch Roof Leak Repair

A Small Leak Causes Major Damage

A porch roof leak repair is easier to tackle when you notice the first signs of trouble. Early fixes can save you time, money, and prevent major damage to the porch roof beam and potentially damage to the interior of your home. Even a small leak over time can result in big damage when not repaired.

Here's a case study of what happens when a leak is undetected for an extended period of time and what repairs were needed so as to give you ideas of how to inspect and repair any porch roof leak you may have.

back porch with privacy lattice



That Shouldn't Happen!

I was watching a rainstorm out our back door and noticed water overflowing onto the back porch from the top of inside of the beam's metal wrap. You should never expect to find water at this specific location and I knew immediately: "Houston, we have a problem!"

back porch with roof leak
View of where back porch roof and house roof join
Where was the water coming from and how could it get under the metal beam wrap?

metal beam wrap where water was running over
Water overflowed the metal wrap
Upon inspecting the area on the house roof where it joins the porch shed roof I discovered a small gap in the siding which was installed 8 years ago. This allowed water to run down the house roof and into that open space. Water then ran down the inside of the siding and collected along the bottom of the beam's metal wrap.

In addition to the gap, the roof flashing did not extend to the end of the roof exacerbating the situation.

roof and porch roof juntion
I initially tried to caulk the small gap in the siding to determine if this was the cause
Because of the worker's lack of attention to detail during the original house construction, water ran behind the siding unnoticed for eight years.

Porch Roof Leak Repair - Assessing the Damage

You could not tell the damage by simply looking at the wrapped beam.

typical porch beam covered with metal wrap
Porch beam with metal wrap intact - looks fine but what lies beneath
Like peeling back an onion, we exposed the damage little by little as we removed the metal wrap.

I was able to poke through the beam where it meets the house wall and knew the beam would need to be replaced.

roof and porch roof juntion
Soft enough to push my finger through the beam - not a good sign
As you can see from the photos, most of the beam had deteriorated and we were most thankful it was not a supporting beam. This made replacing it much easier. What you will see is water damage over a period of eight years.

porch beam exposed showing water damage from leak
Porch beam shows water damage


deteriorated porch beam due to leak in roof
Porch beam needs to be replaced


porch beam detoriated from leak
Porch beam with water damage


In order to assess the damage to the sheathing on the roofs, we would need to remove several shingles and siding which we would do after we replaced the beam.


Roof Leak Repair - Replace the Beam

First, we removed a piece of siding and began removing the metal facing to expose the entire beam. removing porch siding to expose beam
Removing porch siding material to expose beam
Next, we began cutting away the old beam and carefully removing it piece by piece.

cutting away disentigrated porch beam

We built the new beam with 2x10's and 2x4's, fitting them to fit the space. The house structure was not affected by the water damage in any way so attaching the new beam material was fairly easy.

new porch beam installed
Installing new porch beam
We then covered the beam with sheathing.

new sheathing on porch beam
Covering porch beam with sheathing


Roof Leak Repair - New Metal Wrap, Flashing, Shingles, and Siding

The next task was to remove a few possibly affected shingles to assess any sheathing issues. Fortunately, the roof sheathing and house sheathing, although a little discolored was deemed to be ok and need not be replaced.

Additional flashing was installed and extended to redirect water into the gutter.

adding additional roof flashing
Roof flashing extended
Due to the pandemic, we could not match the color of siding so we chose one that was fairly close. Our intent is to replace the remaining siding pieces to match the new siding at some point in time.

New metal was installed over the beam and was cut and bent to fit on site.

bending metal wrap for beam
Bending metal to make the beam wrap
new metal wrap and siding installed
Installing new metal beam wrap and siding


Porch Leak Repair - Final Notes

We were most fortunate there was no damage to our home's structure and that the beam was not a supporting beam. Although we will have to replace the siding at some point, we were happy to resolve this issue.

back porch with leak resolved





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