Installing a skylight in your home or buying a home with a skylight already installed is great for four reasons:
1. Brings extra light into your home;
2. Lets you see the sky from the comfort of inside;
3. Lets you scare the crap out of your family by going on the roof and knocking on the skylight when they’re quietly watching TV; and
4. They inevitably leak. Wait, what?…
Drip drop … it’s only a matter of time …
Skylights are cool, but they usually will leak in a home’s lifetime. And unfortunately, fixing the leak is usually a difficult process that isn’t recommended for your average homeowner.
In the case of the skylight I recently had to fix, the roofing around the skylight was the main culprit of leaking. The difficulty is greater than just spreading tar on the roof, though. You have to:
1. Start by cleaning around the roof area very very very good.
2. Roll out granulated flat roof roofing material.
3. Roll out 4 inch mesh on all of the seams.
4. Heat it up very very hot so it will stick to the original roof.
5. Spread roofing tar all over this to ensure no leak springs in the future.
It’s a pretty time consuming process. If you have shingles and not flat roofing, the process is complex as well (just in a different way). Like I’ve said before, you really shouldn’t DIY roofing unless you really know what you’re doing because that’s one place you don’t want to mess up on!
I don’t usually recommend skylights because they’re an obvious weak spot in your roof that will probably leak; however, if you have/get them, make sure when they do leak to have it fixed by someone who knows what they’re doing so they don’t leak again!
