Residential Roof Inspection & Leak Detection

You cannot fix what you cannot find, and roof leaks are famously hard to find. Water enters at a flashing or a lifted shingle, travels along the deck, and shows up as a ceiling stain a room away from where it started. Markit Roofing provides residential roof inspections and leak detection across Calgary and Edmonton, tracing problems to their true source rather than guessing.

An inspection earns its keep at three points in particular: before you buy a home, after a hailstorm, and once a roof passes fifteen years. In each case, a couple of hours with a trained eye and a thermal camera can spare you a surprise that only shows itself once water is already inside the walls. Book your inspection today and know where your roof stands.

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When a Home Roof Inspection Pays for Itself Twice

An inspection is a small step that heads off a large unknown. The classic case is a house purchase: a roof with only a year or two left in it is one of the biggest things a new owner can inherit, and a stain painted over before a showing hides exactly the problem you most want found. A few common situations make a residential roof inspection genuinely worth booking.

The other common trigger is a storm. Hail damage in particular hides well, looking fine from the driveway while the granules that protect the shingles are already gone. Catching that early keeps your insurance options open, because a claim filed months after the event is far harder to prove than one documented while the damage is still fresh.

Our Roof Inspection Process

Walk the Whole Roof Surface

A residential roof inspection starts on the roof, where a trained eye reads the surface the way most homeowners cannot. We check every slope for lifted, cracked, curling, or missing shingles, and for granule loss that indicates a roof is aging, even where nothing has failed yet.

Flashing gets the closest look, because it causes far more leaks than the shingles do. Around 70 percent of spring leak calls in Calgary trace back to failed flashing at chimneys, vents, and valleys, so every one of those joints is examined for corrosion, lifting metal, and split sealant.

Trace the Leak to Its Source

When there is an actual leak to find, we trace it rather than guess. Water travels, so the wet ceiling is rarely below the entry point; it can be meters away along a rafter. We work backward from the stain, using the roof geometry and the attic to follow the path to where water is truly getting in.

For hidden moisture, we bring in an infrared camera. Wet insulation and sheathing shed heat at a different rate than dry material, so a thermal scan lights up saturated areas that are invisible to the eye. It finds water trapped under shingles or in the deck before it shows on your ceiling.

Check the Attic and Ceilings

Half of a roof’s story is told from inside, so the attic is never skipped. We look for water staining on the underside of the deck, damp or compressed insulation, mould, and daylight through gaps, which signal a breach. Each points to something different, and reading them right separates diagnosis from guesswork.

The attic is also where we judge ventilation, because so many home roof problems are ventilation faults in disguise. Blocked soffit vents let the attic run warm and humid, driving ice damming and condensation. Checking here saves paying for roofing that would never fix the cause.

Written Report With Photos

Every inspection ends with a written report you can use, not a verbal summary you half remember. It sets out what we found on each slope, in the attic, and at every flashing, with dated photographs of anything that matters and a plain read on how much life the roof has left.

Where applicable, the report is built to support an insurance claim: it is dated, photographed, and clear about whether the damage is storm-related or wear-related. If a roof insurance claim is on the table, that distinction is often the whole argument, and documenting it before the adjuster attends puts you in a stronger position.

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Common Problems a Home Roof Inspection Finds

Flashing and sealant failures are the leaks we find most, by a wide margin. Water rarely comes through the field of a shingle; it comes through the joints, where metal meets a chimney, a wall, a vent pipe, or a valley. Over years, the sealant splits and the metal works loose or corrodes, and the gap that opens is one a driving rain finds instantly. These faults hide from the ground and are easy to miss from the roof unless you know to examine each joint in turn, which is exactly why around seventy percent of spring leak calls trace back to them rather than to the shingles.

Hail and wind damage is most often the fault of homeowners, without their knowledge. A hailstorm can strip the protective granules from a roof while leaving it looking perfectly fine from the driveway, and wind can lift and crack shingles along an edge without removing them outright. Both forms of damage age a roof quietly and then fail it years later, well after the storm that caused them is forgotten. We inspect specifically for bruising, granule loss, and lifted courses after any significant weather event, recording the evidence while it is still fresh enough to support a claim.

Ice dam damage is the Alberta winter signature, and it hides its harm until spring. A warm attic thaws the snowpack from below, the water tracks toward the frozen eaves, and a dam of ice builds there, levering the lower shingle courses upward and letting water in behind them. Once the thaw clears the ice, the evidence sits buried in the underlayment and sheathing until the first warm rain finds the weakened path. We hunt specifically for the tell-tale eave staining and the courses ice has lifted, since the fault seldom shows itself any other way.

Ventilation and attic faults underlie more roof problems than any single surface defect. An attic that runs warm and humid, usually because soffit intake vents are blocked by insulation, is the root cause of both ice damming and attic rain. Homeowners almost always read the resulting drips as a roof leak and reach for a roofing repair that cannot possibly fix a ventilation problem. We assess the whole system, intake and exhaust together, so that when we tell you the roof is sound and the real issue is airflow, you are not paying to replace shingles that were never the problem.

What Makes Our Roof Inspections Worth Booking

A roof inspection is worth only as much as the person reading the roof and the honesty of what they report afterward. Markit Roofing inspects to find out what is actually going on, not to manufacture a reason to sell you a new roof. Across Calgary and Edmonton, that means a real diagnosis, a written report, and a straight answer about how long your roof has left.

Infrared Finds Hidden Moisture

The roof problems that do the most damage are the ones hidden from view, and a naked eye alone will walk right past them. We use an infrared thermal camera to detect moisture trapped under shingles and in the decking, where wet material radiates heat differently from dry material. It reveals a saturated area long before it bleeds through to mark a ceiling, and that early warning frequently decides whether you face a small repair or a rebuilt section.

We Inspect Inside and Out

A roof cannot be judged by the surface alone, so we always inspect both the inside and the outside. The attic shows what the shingles hide: staining on the deck, damp insulation, mould, and the ventilation faults behind most leaks. Reading the roof and the attic together is the only way to reach the real cause, rather than the symptom visible from the driveway that day.

Reports That Support a Claim

When storm damage is involved, our report is written to stand up. It is dated, photographed, and explicit about whether what we found is weather damage or ordinary wear, which is the exact distinction an insurer weighs. A homeowner describing hail damage over the phone is easy to refuse; a third-party report documenting it while it’s fresh is a great deal harder to dispute when the adjuster attends.

Honest, No-Upsell Findings

A residential roof inspection should tell you the truth about your roof, including when it is fine. We are just as willing to tell you a roof has ten good years left, and to set up roof maintenance to protect it, as to flag one that needs work, because our value to you is an accurate picture, not a sale. That is why homeowners call us for a second opinion when another contractor has told them they need a full replacement.

Perfect Before You Buy a Home

Buying a home is exactly when a roof inspection earns its keep, because the roof is one of the biggest unknowns in the whole purchase. We give buyers a clear read on the roof’s condition, and how many years it has left before they commit, so a tired roof becomes a known factor in the negotiation rather than an unwelcome surprise in the first winter after the keys change hands.

Residential Roof Inspection & Leak Detection

When a Home Roof Inspection Pays for Itself Twice

Our Roof Inspection Process

Walk the Whole Roof Surface

Trace the Leak to Its Source

Check the Attic and Ceilings

Written Report With Photos

Have a new roofing project?

Common Problems a Home Roof Inspection Finds

What Makes Our Roof Inspections Worth Booking

Infrared Finds Hidden Moisture

We Inspect Inside and Out

Reports That Support a Claim

Honest, No-Upsell Findings

Perfect Before You Buy a Home

Maintenance & Repairs Services

Roofing Installation & Replacement Services

Emergency Roof Repair Service

Waterproofing & Coating Services

Roofing Inspection & Leak Detection Services

Insurance Claim Assistance Service

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