Tile Roofing in Phoenix & the Valley

The tile lasts. The underlayment doesn't.

A tile roof is two systems stacked on top of each other. The tile is a shield — it takes the sun and the impact and sheds most of the water. Underneath it sits the underlayment, and that is the layer doing the actual waterproofing.

Concrete and clay tile can outlast the house. The underlayment cannot. Arizona heat bakes it from above and cooks it from below in an unvented attic, and it dries out, goes brittle, and starts to split. When a Valley tile roof leaks, the tile is usually fine. The felt beneath it is finished.

That is why the most common job we do on a tile roof is not a replacement at all. It is a lift-and-relay: we carefully remove and stack your existing tile, strip the old underlayment, repair anything wrong with the deck, install new underlayment, and re-lay the same tile you already own. You keep the roof you paid for and get a new waterproofing layer under it.

What a lift-and-relay involves

• Tile removal and stacking. Your tile is taken up by hand and stacked on the roof so it can go back down. Cracked pieces are set aside and matched.
• Tear-off. Every layer of old underlayment and every nail comes off, down to bare decking.
• Deck inspection. With the roof open we can finally see the sheathing. Soft, delaminated, or water-damaged sections get replaced before anything goes back on.
• New underlayment. Fresh underlayment across the whole roof, with the valleys, eaves, and penetrations detailed properly — those are where leaks start.
• Flashing and metal. Valley metal, pipe jacks, and wall flashing replaced or reset rather than reused past their life.
• Tile re-laid. Your tile goes back down, broken pieces swapped out, ridge and hip re-set and sealed.
• Cleanup. Debris hauled, ground magnet-swept for nails, site left the way we found it.

Signs your tile roof needs attention

• Stains on a ceiling or a wall, especially after the first real monsoon storm of the season.
• Tiles that have slipped out of line, or a course that looks visibly lower than the ones beside it.
• Cracked or broken tile you can see from the ground, or pieces of tile in the yard.
• Loose ridge or hip caps, or mortar crumbling out from under them.
• Debris and granules collecting in the valleys.
• An underlayment that has never been replaced and a roof that is twenty years old or more.

If you are seeing any of these, get it looked at before the next monsoon rather than after. A cracked tile is inexpensive. The ceiling underneath it is not.