Roof Repair in Garfield, NJ

Why Garfield Roofs Leak

About 41% of Garfield’s homes were built before 1950, and more than a quarter date from 1939 or earlier, according to the 2023 Census estimates used in the city’s Housing Element. A roof on a house that age has usually been re-covered several times, and each round leaves something behind. These are the failure points we find most often on Garfield repair calls:

Chimneys and the flashing around them

Many pre-war and 1940s houses in Garfield have brick chimneys, often still standing even where the heating system now vents another way. The metal counter-flashing set into the mortar loosens as the mortar ages, and water runs down behind it into the attic. Sealant smeared over the top is a common previous “fix” that buys a season or two. We repair or rebuild the flashing and handle leak tracing from inside the attic, so we are not guessing from the street.

Porch, entry and rear roofs

Garfield two-families often have a front porch roof, a covered side entry or a rear roof over stairs and back rooms. These are lower-pitch surfaces meeting a taller wall, and the joint where the small roof meets the house siding is a classic leak path, especially once the siding over it has been replaced and the old flashing buried.

Layers and old board sheathing

On the oldest houses the deck is often individual boards rather than plywood. Boards shrink and cup, nails back out and lift shingles from below, and when two or three layers of shingles are stacked on top, fasteners in the top layer never bite properly. A repair on a roof like this has to account for what is underneath.

Vents, pipes and skylights

Rubber pipe boots crack in the sun after roughly a decade, and older skylights lose their seals. Both cause small, steady leaks that show up as a brown ring on the second-floor ceiling, which in a Garfield two-family is often the tenant’s ceiling.

Weather, Trees and the Two Rivers

Garfield sits where the Saddle River runs into the Passaic, with the Passaic forming the city’s western edge. Rivers do not damage roofs directly, but the storms that raise them do. The leaks we see after a big nor’easter or a tropical remnant are mostly wind-driven: rain pushed sideways under the shingle tabs, up under loose ridge caps and behind flashing that holds up fine in a straight-down shower.

Winter brings a different problem. When an attic is poorly ventilated, heat from the living space melts snow high on the roof, and the water refreezes at the cold eaves into an ice dam. Water then backs up under the shingles and appears at the top of an exterior wall. Bergen County is outside the area where New Jersey requires an ice barrier membrane (the state limits that requirement to Sussex County), so many older Garfield roofs were never given one. On houses that keep getting ice dams, we recommend adding it at the eaves during repairs and fixing the attic airflow behind the problem.

Street trees and backyard trees matter on tightly spaced lots. Leaves and twigs from a neighbor’s tree collect in valleys and behind chimneys, hold moisture against the shingles and dam water in gutters. Keeping valleys and gutters clear prevents a surprising share of repair calls.

What a Garfield Repair Visit Looks Like

1. Phone call. Tell us where the water shows up, when it started, and whether it only happens in certain storms. A leak that only appears in wind-driven rain points somewhere different from one that drips every time.
2. Stop the water. If the leak is active, the first job is a temporary cover, which our emergency roofing crew can arrange at any hour.
3. Inspection, inside and out. We check the attic for stains, daylight, wet insulation and soft decking, then the roof surface, flashing, vents and gutters. In a two-family we may need to reach the attic through the upstairs unit, so it helps to let your tenant know.
4. Photos and a written estimate. You get pictures of what we found and a written estimate. If storm damage is involved, those photos support your insurance claim. More on that on our storm damage repair page.
5. The repair. We match shingles as closely as the existing roof allows, replace flashing rather than caulking over it, and leave the attic and gutters clean.

Repair or Replace, and When a Repair Needs a Permit

A repair makes sense when the problem is local, such as one chimney, one valley or one storm-damaged slope, and the rest of the roof still has life left. Replacement starts to make more sense when shingles are curling and losing granules across every slope, when there are already two or more layers, or when you are fixing a new leak every season. If your roof is in that second group, our Garfield roof replacement page covers tear-off and decking in detail.

Roof Repair Questions from Garfield Homeowners

More Roofing Help in Garfield

For an overview of everything we do in the city, visit our Garfield roofing contractor page, or see the wider Bergen County service area and our statewide New Jersey roof repair page.

Other Garfield services: roof replacement in Garfield, Garfield siding installation and repair and gutter work in Garfield.

We also handle roof repair in Clifton, roof repair in Passaic and roof repair in Wallington, and you can read about leak repairs across the county on our Bergen County roof leak repair page.