Arguably northern Virginia roofing can be one of the most costly of all home repairs a homeowner has to contend with. While a complete tear off and replacement can cost tens of thousands, often times if you educate yourself with some basic roofing knowledge you can find roofing repairs to be more economical. For instance, if you can “talk turkey” with a roof contractor, you may find that the price they give you is more competitive than it would be when quoting a homeowner who knows nothing more than, “I got a leak”. So what are some of the most common mishaps with a roof and why do they occur? Well age can be a large factor when it comes to an existing roof. Most roofs if installed properly and utilizing quality materials when exposed to northern Virginia roofing weather will last up to 20 years. Though if either the workmanship or the materials have been compromised in any way, look for the life of your northern Virginia roofing to be only half of that, sometimes even less. So say that you’ve been lucky with the quality of the materials, but the workmanship, although up to a building inspector’s code, just happens to have broken down in one of the typical problem areas of a roof line. What area has the highest percentage of problems? Across the board there is no contest, it’s the roof valleys. Roof valleys are the areas at the bottom that meet coming from two higher points. You see it is within most local northern Virginia roofing building codes to cover the valley surfaces in one of two ways. The first way is for the contractor to intertwine the roof shingles in an end over end manner directly over the...