Roof Repair in Los Gatos, San Jose & the South Bay
A leaking roof doesn’t usually fail all at once. It starts with a slow brown stain above a hallway closet, a piece of asphalt shingle sitting in the driveway after a windstorm, or a single cracked tile you didn’t notice until the atmospheric river rolled through and the water finally found the opening. By the time most Bay Area homeowners call us, the roof has been telling them something for a while.
Los Gatos Roofing has been answering those calls since 1978. In four-plus decades, our crew has seen just about every way a South Bay roof can fail — tile over open spaced-sheathing, solar mounts drilled through concrete tile, rodents chewing through S-tile underlayment, asphalt shingles cooked from below by an unvented attic, flat roofs ponding in the wrong spot. When we show up for a roof repair, we already know where to look.
If what you need is honest, code-compliant work from a family-owned roofer who will tell you the truth about whether your roof is worth fixing, you’re in the right place.
Roof Leak Repair: Why Bay Area Roofs Actually Leak
Most of the roof leak repair calls we answer across Santa Clara Valley come from a short list of predictable causes. Tree debris dams up in valleys and behind chimneys until water migrates sideways under the roofing material. Broken tiles from foot traffic — solar installers, painters, satellite techs — open up new pathways every year. On older asphalt shingle roofs, the granules are long gone, the fiberglass mat is exposed, and the roof is quietly rotting from the top down.
Before we fix anything, we find the source. Water almost never enters the roof where it shows up on the ceiling — it can migrate ten or fifteen feet along the underside of the decking before finally dripping through the insulation. Our crew traces it back to the actual point of entry, then fixes that — not just the spot on the drywall.
Tile Roof Repair
Roughly nine out of every ten leak calls we get are on tile roofs, and most of them fall into three buckets.
The first is debris: clogged valleys, dirt packed under the tile from years of wind, and water that migrates sideways until it finds a weak spot. A clean valley and a repapered section is often all that’s needed.
The second is broken tile — usually a concrete S-tile or flat tile — cracked by someone who walked on the roof without knowing how. We pull the broken tile, inspect the underlayment underneath, replace what’s torn, and set a matching tile back into the field.
The third is rodents. Squirrels and rats love the air space under S-tile and will chew straight through felt underlayment to nest. Those repairs involve exclusion work, replacing damaged underlayment (often with a granular, tear-resistant membrane rodents don’t like), and resetting the tile. We’ll tell you upfront when rodents are likely to come back and what actually changes the odds.
Shingle Roof Repair
Asphalt shingle roofs lose their granules over time — that’s the sand-like grit you’ll find in your gutters and downspouts. Once the granules are gone, the sun starts burning through the asphalt, and the fiberglass mat underneath begins to show through as a silvery sheen. That’s tread wearing off a tire.
If your shingle roof is under 15 years old and the granules are intact, most leaks are repairable: a cracked pipe boot, a failed vent flashing, an improperly installed skylight, a kick-out flashing that was never there to begin with. We handle those every day. If your roof is more than 20 years old and the granules are gone across whole sections, we’ll tell you that too — see the section below on when a repair actually makes sense.
Metal Roof Repair
Standing seam metal is the longest-lasting roof we install, but it isn’t maintenance-free. The most common metal roof repairs we see are fastener backout on exposed-fastener panels, sealant failure at pipe boots and curbs, and damage at the kick-out or step flashing where the roof meets a wall. Because the panels themselves typically outlive the sealants and flashings around them, catching those details early is what keeps a metal roof watertight for its full life.
When a Repair Makes Sense (and When It Doesn’t)
Our rule of thumb is simple: if a repair will give you at least five more years of watertight service, we’ll recommend it. If it won’t, we’ll tell you.
We won’t charge you for a $3,000 repair on a 28-year-old roof that’s going to fail somewhere else six months later. That’s not a good deal for you, and it’s not how we’ve stayed in business this long. When we’re on your roof, we look at it as a system — age, plane-by-plane condition, venting, flashings, underlayment, where we can see it — and tell you whether a targeted repair, a bridge patch to hold you through a season, or a full replacement is the real answer.
Not every home needs a new roof. When the right call is a repair, that’s the call we give you. When it isn’t, we won’t pretend otherwise.
Our Inspection & Repair Process
1. Free, no-pressure roof inspection — in person, on the roof, not a drone flyover.
2. Written scope that explains the cause, the fix, and a transparent price.
3. In-house crew performs the work. No subcontractors on any LGR roof.
4. Full photo documentation of what we found and what we did.
5. Written warranty on workmanship, if applicable.
Serving Los Gatos, San Jose & the South Bay
The Next Step
If you’ve got a stain on a ceiling, a piece of shingle in the yard, or a nagging feeling that something up there isn’t right, an honest inspection now is always less expensive than an emergency call later. Our team has been making that assessment for Bay Area homeowners since 1978, and we’ll tell you the truth — even if the truth is that you don’t need us yet.
