If it's leaking right now
Make the room safe
If the ceiling is sagging or water is near a light fitting, keep everyone out of the room and turn the power off at the switchboard.
Catch what you can
Buckets and towels under the drip, and move furniture and anything valuable. Leave a bulging ceiling alone rather than poking it.
Get help if it's storm damage
For storm damage emergencies, call the SES on 132 500. Moneysmart says to tell your insurer as soon as you can and before paying for temporary repairs, since many insurers can arrange a tarp. Photograph the damage before you move anything.
Write down what you see
Where the water appears, when it started and what the weather was doing. Water often runs along timbers before it drips, so these notes help a roofer trace it.
How Perth's rain finds the weak spots
Three wet months
Perth Metro averages 723.9 mm of rain a year over 80.4 rain days, and July alone brings 147.0 mm. Makuru, the Noongar season covering June and July, is the coldest and wettest stretch, with more frequent storms.
Summer deluges
Perth's highest one-day total, 114.4 mm, fell on 10 February 2017 from a tropical low. A leak that only shows in a downpour like that can point to a valley or gutter that can't keep up, rather than a cracked tile.
Wetter in the hills
Bickley, in the Perth Hills, averages 1,096.1 mm a year, well above the city. If you're up there, a check before Makuru is money well spent.
Where Perth leaks usually start
Monier lists cracked mortar under the ridge and hip caps as a common cause of leaks, along with cracked or slipped tiles and blocked gutters, downpipes and valleys. Flashings around chimneys, skylights and walls are the other usual suspects.
On a metal roof, look to lifted or rusted screws, laps that have opened up, and rusted gutters. If solar panels went on recently, say so, because their brackets go through the roof. Our leak finder helps narrow it down before the roofer arrives.
Questions for a Perth roofer about your leak
- How will you find the source, and will you water test it?
- Will you check the gutters, valleys and downpipes, in case overflow is the real cause?
- Is this a permanent repair now, or a tarp until it's dry?
- If the leak comes back in the next big rain, what happens?
- Can you photograph what you found and what you fixed?
Where we'd start
If you can, get last winter's leak found in autumn, while the roof is dry and safe to work on. If it's already raining, get it tarped quickly and fixed in the next dry spell. And be wary of anyone who wants to sell you a full restoration to cure one leak, unless they can show you photos of why the whole roof needs it.
Want a roofer to take a look?
Tell us the job and your postcode. We match it with a Find My Roofer certified roofer who specialises in that kind of work, and they call you to quote. Your number goes to them alone.
Send us the details and your postcode. Where we have a licence-checked roofer for your part of Perth, your number and email go to that roofer and nobody else; where we don't, you'll hear that from us straight away. There's more on leaks in general on our roof leak repair page, and the Perth hub covers the city's other roofing jobs.