Flashing Repair Pittsburgh - Real Metalwork, Not Another Layer of Tar

Somebody already smeared roofing cement on that flashing, didn't they? It held a season, then the leak came back. Flashing is metalwork — and that's how we repair it.

Here's the life story of most flashing leaks in this city: the metal around a chimney or wall starts letting water in. Someone climbs up with a caulk gun or a bucket of tar, covers it, and collects the check. It holds through summer. Then winter's freeze-thaw gets to work — the tar stiffens, cracks, and peels away from the metal — and by spring the stain on the ceiling is back, except now there's a layer of black goop making the real repair harder.

Pittsburgh Roofing Specialists treats flashing for what it is: sheet metal work. We remove the failed metal and the old tar, bend new flashing to fit, and lock it into the structure the way it was meant to sit. Done that way, a flashing repair outlives the shingles around it.

Roofing cement has a real job: small emergency patches and sealing minor gaps. What it can't do is replace structure. Tar is rigid where flashing needs to flex, it shrinks in the cold, and Pittsburgh hands it dozens of freeze-thaw cycles a winter to crack it open. Worse, a thick tar patch can trap water behind it, so the leak continues invisibly while the ceiling stays dry — until the wood underneath has had enough.

A metal repair works because it does what the original did, new: fresh step flashing bent on site to match your roof, counter flashing cut into a clean mortar joint — not glued to the brick face — and every piece overlapped so gravity does the sealing. No goop required, nothing to peel.

One honest boundary: if your chimney's brick or crown is crumbling, that's masonry, not roofing. We'll repair the flashing and the mortar joint it sits in — and if the chimney itself needs a mason, we'll tell you straight instead of tarring over a structural problem.