Shingles shed most rain, but flashing and valleys carry it — and when a junction fails, water enters exactly where two surfaces meet.
Flashing and valley leak repair in Owensboro is about junctions. A roof is mostly flat, overlapping surface, and that surface does a good job on its own. The trouble starts where the surface stops: where a roof meets a brick chimney, where it runs into a side wall, where a skylight interrupts the slope, and where two slopes meet in a valley. Each of those junctions needs metal, sealant, or both to bridge the gap, and each one can fail quietly for months before a stain appears inside.
Owensboro has plenty of brick chimneys and older homes where flashing was installed decades ago, and the Green River region's wet winters are hard on metal joints. Sealant shrinks, valley metal rusts at the points where water concentrates, and a chimney that has settled a fraction can open a gap in its counterflashing. This page explains how each junction works, how it fails, and what a proper repair checks before the shingles go back down.
Step flashing works like shingles made of metal. Each piece overlaps the shingle course below it and tucks behind the wall covering above it, so water running down the wall steps from piece to piece and back onto the roof surface. The system only works as a set. One missing or misplaced piece breaks the chain, and water slips behind the remaining pieces and into the wall or the roof deck.
Failures here are rarely dramatic. A piece of step flashing can corrode, bend out of shape during a re-roof, or lose the seal where it meets the wall. Siding that has been replaced over old flashing can also hide the problem: the wall looks finished while the flashing underneath is no longer woven correctly. A repair at a wall junction should expose the full run of step flashing, replace damaged pieces, and re-weave them with the shingle courses rather than sealing over the top and hoping the sealant holds.
A brick chimney is a special case, because brick and mortar move differently from a wood roof deck. Counterflashing handles that movement. It is set into a reglet cut into the chimney's mortar joints and bent down over the base flashing, so water running down the chimney face is thrown clear of the joint. When the mortar joint deteriorates, or when the counterflashing itself rusts or pulls loose, water runs straight down the brick and behind the base flashing.
Owensboro's brick chimneys see repeated wetting and freezing through December and January, and mortar joints are often the first part of the chimney to show it. A chimney flashing repair therefore starts with the chimney, not the roof: the condition of the mortar, the fit of the counterflashing in its reglet, and whether the chimney has a cricket — a small peaked diverter on the uphill side that splits water around a wide chimney instead of letting it pond against the brick. Sealing the outside of a chimney without fixing its counterflashing leaves the entry point open.
A valley is where two roof slopes meet, and it carries more water than any other part of the roof. In an open valley, a strip of metal runs down the centre and the shingles stop short of it, so water flows over metal rather than over shingle edges. In a closed valley, shingles are woven or cut across the valley line. Both designs work when they are sound, and both fail at the same weak spot: the pinch point where the valley narrows and water flow concentrates.
Rust is the slow failure. Leaves and debris sit in a valley, hold moisture against the metal, and over seasons the metal thins at the pinch point until a pinhole opens. From inside, the stain may appear well away from the valley itself, because water that enters at the pinch point runs along decking before it drops. A valley repair replaces the compromised metal and clears the debris path, and it checks the decking underneath, which may have softened after seasons of slow wetting.
Skylights bring daylight in, and they bring a flashing problem with them. A skylight sits in a hole cut through the roof, and its curb — the raised frame it sits on — needs flashing on all four sides, plus a head flashing at the top and a sill flashing at the bottom. Any one side can fail on its own: head flashing that lets wind-driven rain underneath, side flashing that has lost its seal, or a sill that ponds water instead of shedding it.
Skylight leaks are easy to misread, because condensation on the inside of a skylight can drip in the same place a flashing leak would. In Owensboro's humid Ohio River climate, a skylight in a bathroom or kitchen is especially prone to that confusion, since warm moist air rises straight to the glass. A repair visit should separate the two before cutting anything open: a flashing leak follows rain, condensation follows cold glass and warm indoor air. Fixing the wrong one leaves the drip exactly where it was.
Flashing work also touches the paperwork side of a roof job. In Kentucky there is no state roofer licence, so a licence number tells you very little on its own. What matters more is the written scope: which junctions are being repaired, what metal is being used, whether decking underneath is included, and how the work follows NRCA guidance for flashing details. A scope that names each junction — chimney, wall, skylight, valley — is checkable in a way that a single line saying the flashing will be fixed is not.
Larger scopes may also involve Owensboro Metropolitan Planning Commission permits, particularly when decking is replaced or structure is altered as part of the repair. That question belongs at the start of the job, in the written scope, so there are no surprises once shingles are lifted. And because water from a flashing failure often travels, the scope should also say which parts of the slope were checked and found sound, not only which junction is being repaired.
Step flashing is a series of small, overlapping metal pieces woven into the shingle courses where a roof meets a wall. Counterflashing is the metal set into the wall or chimney above it, directing water out over the step flashing. Both have to be in place for the junction to stay dry.
Yes, and it is one of the most common flashing leaks. A valley collects water from two slopes at once, and the pinch point where the valley narrows concentrates that flow. If the valley metal has rusted or its seams have opened, water finds the weak point exactly where the flow is strongest.
Often they show up as stains on a wall or ceiling some distance from the chimney or skylight. Water that enters at a flashing joint runs along decking or a rafter before it drops, so the stain marks where the water landed, not where it got in.
A flashing repair can be straightforward when the metal is accessible and the surrounding shingles are sound. It becomes larger work when the flashing is buried under siding or brick, or when decking beneath it has softened and needs replacing first.
Several factors: how many junctions are involved, whether brick or siding has to be opened to reach the counterflashing, whether valley metal must be replaced, and whether decking underneath is damaged. A scope that names each junction separately makes those factors clear.
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