The next hour
If water is coming into your house right now, a few things matter more than anything else.
- Move what you can. Get furniture, rugs, electronics, and paperwork out from under the leak. Water damage to belongings adds up faster than the roof repair itself.
- Catch the water. A bucket or storage bin under the drip, and a towel or tarp on the floor around it. If a ceiling is sagging with trapped water, a small hole at the lowest point lets it drain where you want it to instead of where it decides to.
- Photograph everything. The ceiling stain, the drip, the wet floor, and anything you can safely see outside: missing shingles, slipped tile, a branch on the roof. These pictures matter later if you make an insurance claim.
- Stay off the roof. A wet roof, a loose tile, or a soft spot in the decking can put you in the hospital. Leave the climbing to people with the equipment and the experience.
- Call (386) 864-9600. Tell us what you’re seeing and where you are. That’s all we need to get started.
What we do when we arrive
Our first job is to stop the water. If weather or daylight makes a permanent repair impossible on the spot, we dry in the damaged area with a secured tarp or temporary underlayment so nothing else gets in. That buys time to do the real repair correctly instead of in a hurry.
Then we find the source. Water almost never comes into the house directly below where it gets through the roof. It travels along the underlayment, down a rafter, across the top of the drywall, and drips somewhere that has little to do with the actual opening. Our crew has worked together for more than 30 years, and tracing a leak back to a cracked tile, a split pipe boot, a lifted shingle, or a gap in the flashing is the part of the job that experience is for.
Once we know what failed, we photograph it, explain it in plain terms, and write up an itemized quote for the permanent fix. The repair itself is done by our own crew, with materials matched to your existing roof. Read about how a standard roof repair goes with us if you’d like the full picture.
Storm and hurricane damage
The Florida coast gives roofs a hard life. Tropical-storm winds lift the edges of shingles and work at ridge caps. Wind-driven rain pushes under tile and finds flashing that was fine for twenty years of ordinary weather. Falling limbs crack tile and punch through decking.
After a big storm, the damage you can see from the driveway is rarely the whole story. A few missing shingles usually means more are loose. A single slipped tile often means others nearby have shifted. We look at the entire roof, not just the obvious spot, and we tell you what we found whether it’s good news or not. If you’re unsure whether your roof took damage at all, a free roof inspection after the storm will settle it.
Documenting for your insurance claim
Emergency work and insurance claims go hand in hand, and we handle both. As we find damage we photograph it, note what failed and why, and keep the record organized. When your adjuster comes out, we can walk the roof with them so the claim reflects what the roof actually needs rather than what’s visible from the ground. Our insurance claim help page explains how that works.
Who shows up
First Coast Roofing is a family business on its third generation of roofers, based in Palm Coast. The same core crew has worked together for over 30 years, with more than 40 years of hands-on experience between us. We’re Florida Certified Roofing Contractor #CCC057958, fully insured, and manufacturer-certified Atlas installers.
We’ve done this kind of work on the hardest roofs in the area, including broken tile and a new chimney 56 feet up on an oceanfront Ocean Hammock home. Every repair we make is backed by our guarantee to beat any competitor’s warranty. When it’s leaking, call. When it’s fixed, it stays fixed.
