Howdy - I'm looking for some info/advice on our tar and gravel roof. I'm not too savvy with roof stuff, so bear with me if I don't describe things properly or miss out on some info.
We've been in this house about a year, it's about a 27-year old house, on the Northern California coast (rain and fog, no freezing). The garage and two rooms of the house are under a tar-and-gravel roof. It may be the original roof, we don't know.
First thing I noticed was water pooling on the driveway, coming under the garage door. Looking up, I see that it's coming over the top of the roof, above the garage - but specifically, it's coming through about one inch below the edge, where some trim meets the outer walls of the front of the house.
We had a couple of roofing people look at it - the usual range of "replace the whole thing" to "too small for me, just patch it yourself." So I decided to try it myself, based on some suggestions for how to approach patching the edges.
First thing I notice is that there are some big puddles. I've been up a few different times and we've always got bigger puddles than our neighbors, for longer. The roof is not flat or pitched properly for drainage.
I've got a bunch of questions - any help with any of them is appreciated!
- The only thing I've found about fixing some of these lower spots is formatting link- basically putting down increasingly larger concentric circles of roofing material to raise it up on the low spots. Any thoughts on this approach? 1 - Does it have to be dry to do put this stuff down? and 2
- the gravel is loose on top but much of it is embedded in the tar - so how low do I need to "scrape" before putting any new material on?
- what are some methods for removing the water? I tried sweeping some directly into the gutter downspout, but that takes a LONG time with very little effect and doesn't work for all the puddles given where the puddles are and where the downspouts are?
- as far as the "leakage" along the front edge, I was advised to patch the edge of the roof - I'm not sure how to describe this - but whatever is joining the roof material to the edge - I can see sort of a crack where it opened up. I scraped (using a wirebrush) whatever loose gravel I could get, and took some Plastic Roof Cement (wet or dry surfaces) and applied it. It seems to be mostly working, but it also doesn't seem to harden. Is it supposed to, the way caulking does? It's pretty tough to apply because it sticks to itself more than it'll stick to a wet roof....
Thanks - a lot of intertwining issues here, appreciate any help!