Roof Leak Repair Across Lancaster City and County
A rowhome on a Lancaster side street shares its roof edge with the house next door, and water crossing that line does not care whose deed it is under. Half the leak calls we take in the city come from the party wall, the rear low-slope section, or a flat porch roof that was patched twice before anyone looked at the seam. Out in the townships the causes change entirely.
This is roof repair as our Lancaster, PA office does it — the same crew, the same number, the same written estimate before anything starts.
Diagnosis comes before any number. In the city grid we start at the party wall and the rear addition, where a low-slope surface meets a vertical brick wall and the counterflashing was never let into a mortar joint. On the Victorian blocks around Chestnut Hill the suspects are dormer cheeks, short steep valleys, and a chimney carrying four decades of roof cement. In Manheim and East Hempfield the housing is younger and simpler, so failures cluster at pipe boots, at the ridge, and wherever somebody face-nailed a previous repair. We photograph what we find and show you before writing anything down.
Cement is not flashing. Where a wall meets a roof, metal has to be stepped course by course and tucked into a mortar joint, and no amount of sealant smeared over the top substitutes for that. A split pipe boot gets a new boot rather than a collar of caulk, because the rubber has already lost its plasticizer and will open again beside the patch. Wind-broken seal strips run further than the visible tear, so we lift and check the courses around it. On a low-slope rear roof, the repair is a properly bonded patch cut square into sound membrane, not another bucket of coating.
You get a free consultation, an itemized estimate naming each item and the reason for it, and a written proposal before a crew is scheduled. The office answers around the clock, so a Sunday ceiling stain is a phone call rather than a two-day wait. Here is where we talk people out of spending: a single failed boot on a roof with flexible shingles and intact granules is a repair, and we will say so instead of selling a tear-off. We will also decline to keep patching a field that sheds granules every time it is walked, because repeated patching on a dying roof is paying twice.
Why Lancaster roofs are different
Lancaster's building stock changes every few blocks. The tight grid around Penn Square and West King Street puts short, steep front planes and flat rear roofs on shared walls, so debris and water travel between houses. The Victorian streets near Chestnut Hill add turrets, dormers and long valleys. Move out past Millersville, Lititz or Ephrata and the roofs get simpler but far more exposed, sitting on open ground above the Conestoga with nothing upwind of them but fields.
- All Pro Home Improvement and Roofing
- Address: 210 W Grant St #411-C, Lancaster, PA 17603
- Phone: (717) 912-9051
- Hours: Open 24 hours, seven days a week
- Licensed & insured in Pennsylvania — #PA052821
- Serving: Lancaster and Lancaster County
Other roofing work we do in Lancaster
Roof Replacement in Lancaster · Roof Installation in Lancaster · Metal Roofing in Lancaster
Roof Repair in nearby markets
Roof Repair in Exton · Roof Repair in Allentown · Roof Repair in Media · Roof Repair in Carlisle
Read the full roof repair service page for the technical detail that applies everywhere we work, or see everything we cover across Lancaster County.
Roof Repair in Lancaster
Roof Repair in Lancaster — common questions
The leak is right at the wall I share with my neighbor. Whose roof is it?
On the older city blocks the two roofs meet over a shared wall, and the flashing or coping on top of it belongs to both houses in practice even when the deeds read otherwise. We can only work on the side we are hired for, so we photograph the whole junction and show both owners what we see. Most of these get solved once the counterflashing is cut into the brick properly on both sides.
Why does the flat rear roof on my rowhome keep leaking?
Those rear sections are low-slope, so water sits on them instead of running off, and they were often covered with a rolled product then coated again every few years by whoever was cheapest. Coating hides seams rather than repairing them. A proper fix cuts back to sound membrane, replaces wet insulation or decking underneath, and rebuilds the termination where the roof meets the wall and the drain or scupper.
Can a leak be repaired in cold weather?
Yes, with adjustments. Shingle adhesive strips will not seal on their own in the cold, so replacement tabs and ridge caps get hand-sealed. Membrane work needs the surface dry and warm enough to bond, which sometimes means a controlled temporary repair now and the permanent one on the first workable day. Sitting through an entire winter with water entering the house is the genuinely expensive choice.
Do you repair roofs on barns and farm outbuildings?
Yes. Barns, shops, equipment sheds and stables come up constantly across Lancaster County, and most wear exposed-fastener metal that has been up for decades. Typical repairs are backing out and upsizing failed screws, replacing cracked washers along a whole run rather than one at a time, resetting a ridge cap, and rebuilding an eave where a panel has rusted from the cut edge inward. We will tell you when a run has gone too far to patch.
Do you repair outside the city?
Yes, across the county. The Grant Street office covers the city grid, Manheim and East Hempfield townships, and the boroughs around them including Lititz, Ephrata, Millersville and Columbia. Exposure changes noticeably as you leave the city: a sheltered rowhome roof behind other rooflines fails differently from a farmhouse standing alone above the Conestoga. Call (717) 912-9051 with your address and we will schedule a look.
Roof Repair in Lancaster? Call (717) 912-9051.
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