I own a brick colonial in MD. When I bought (2008), the home inspector sai= d the flat roof (10x20, over an addition) was pretty old and would have to = be replaced sooner than later.
I didn't do it right away, but after a storm I noticed a leak where the dry= wall in the ceiling abuts the old outside (brick) wall of the house. The w= all is straight, except for a chimney, and the leak was at one of the corne= rs of the chimney.
I found a guy willing to do it for less (less than $2000, as opposed to $30=
00+). He wasn't in any internet rating system (Checkbook, Angie's List), b= ut I found a guy on a HOA committee who posted that this contractor was OK.The work was OK, but I wasn't happy about having to hassle him to come back= and repaint the new roof. (With that reflecting stuff. The first time he= did it was OK, but it rained too soon after he put it on.)
Only thing I noticed in the year that passed after the work was done was th= at the room smelled of tar/whatever when the roof got really hot. But I fi= gured that wasn't necessarily a big deal, and it stopped after awhile.
So, now, Sandy's come and gone. Main thing we were worried about was power= going out. (Our local utility has tons of outages, but this time less than= 10% of customers in our locality lost power.) I went into the addition la= st night to get on a computer and smelled something musty. Looked over, an= d the leak was back. (It was worse than before, but this was a hurricane. = Last hurricane---Irene---was just before the roofer came to install the ne= w roof, but it didn't leak (or not much) cuz I put a huge tarp over the roo= f.)
So...now I'm not sure what to do: (1) Shrug it off---"it was a hurricane so it's a one-time event" (2) Try to figure out where the leak is coming from (but teh Intertubes sug= gest it's very hard to figure out, at least for flat roofs if I recall corr= ectly) (3) Get the warranty out, and have the guy come back and fix it, despite my= reservations about his competence (4) Get some kind of general contractor guy to try to fix it (5) Get a different roofer to fix it (6) Get a different roofer to repair it
I'd spend more of my own time to try to figure this out, but I've got two s= mall kids, so there's no time to get anything done around the house---have = to beg SWMBO for time (we both work) to get much done on the house these da= ys.