I bought a house last fall with a flat roof over a big garage and bedroom. It’s a rolled roof that should have been replaced years ago. I knew that going in and planned on replacing it within the year. For a variety of reasons I have to delay the $7500 roof replacement until early next year. We’re in Phoenix and it doesn’t rain much, and it didn’t until months after I bought the house, so I didn’t know until what kind of leaking issues I’d have, although I knew there’d be some. It’s a flat roof, after all. I fixed some old patch jobs and that seems to have solved the problem, but the roof is really in awful shape. Given that the patches held, and seeing as most of the roof covers a garage, is it worth my spending a couple hundred bucks on elastomeric coating and making my teenager spend his weekend slapping on a couple coats as a temporary fix to get me through until spring of next year, or maybe even longer?

We have a home built in 1988 with a concrete tile roof in Sedona, Az. In January of this year a roofing company responded to a roof leak. As part of the contract we asked them to do a thorough roof inspection to identify any additional issues. They found none. This week, less than 8 months later, another leak in a different part of the roof failed and they want another $1400 to fix that. I questioned whether their "inspection" should at least cover a year and here is their reply: "Water has been known to travel 30 ft. from it's origin to the noticeable area of damage; thus, a visual inspection and subsequent repair of questionable areas is not, by any means, a warranty that the leak has been fixed. The age and condition of the roof must be taken into consideration, as well. It is due to the preceding conditions that REPAIRS ARE NOT GUARANTEED TO STOP LEAKS." The owner of the company also said that while concrete tile is gauranteed for 50 years, the under layment usually fails in about 12 years and that his visual inspection provided any additional warranty. This seems like BS to me. How's it sound to you?