Do You Need a New Tile Roof, or Just New Underlayment? The Honest Answer
This is the question I get more than any other from tile roof owners in Sarasota and Manatee, and the internet answers it wrong. The tile still looks good, the roof is leaking, so surely you can keep the tile and just put new underlayment under it. I started my career repairing tile roofs, so let me give you the real answer.
The tile is the armor. The underlayment is the roof.
On a tile roof, the tile you see sheds most of the water and takes the sun. The layer that actually keeps your house dry is the underlayment beneath it. Water gets under tile all the time, and the underlayment carries it to the gutter. Concrete and clay tile can last for decades. The underlayment does not. In this climate it starts to give out as early as year twelve, and at seventeen years and older it is close to done. So yes, the tile can look perfect while the roof is failing underneath it. That part of the story is true.
So why not just replace the underlayment?
Because you cannot get to the underlayment without taking every tile off the roof and then putting every tile back. That is the part nobody mentions. Tile is a fragile covering. Every piece has to come off without breaking, be stacked, be handled again, and be set back in place, and a share of it breaks anyway. The labor to do that carefully costs more than new tile does. So "just the underlayment" is not the cheaper job it sounds like. It is a re-roof with an expensive extra step.
That is why a tile re-roof with us means new underlayment and new tile. We match the color and profile as closely as possible to what your community expects, and you get a roof that is new all the way down, not new in the middle.
When we do reuse your tile
On repairs. If you have a few broken tiles, cracked mortar, or a leak at one spot, we reuse and match your existing tile, because there the whole point is blending the repair into what is already on the roof. Ask how long the mortar has been cracked, though. The longer it has gone without repair, the worse the underlayment under it turns out to be, and the closer you are to the re-roof conversation.
How to know which one you need
Get it looked at. On a tile inspection I am looking for broken tile, cracked or missing mortar, and how the underlayment is holding up where I can see it, and I check the attic for the plywood. You get photos, findings, and two prices side by side: the repair, and the re-roof. A repair often runs ten to fifteen percent of a re-roof, and if the roof has only a couple of years left, spending that on a repair is almost always a bad investment. We will say so.
The short version
Tile roofs fail at the underlayment. Replacing only the underlayment means handling every fragile tile twice, which costs more in labor than new tile. So a re-roof is new underlayment and new tile, and your existing tile gets reused only on repairs. If your tile roof is past twelve years, or leaking at any age, call (941) 226-9200 and we will tell you which one it is.
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