Your roof is leaking right now — what to do first
A GTA summer storm can dump more water on your roof in twenty minutes than a whole wet week in April. That's when the phone rings: a stain spreading across a bedroom ceiling, a drip in the hallway, water running down the inside of a skylight shaft. Here's the order we tell people to work in — safety first, water second, diagnosis third. The repair comes after all of that.
1. Make the area safe before you make it dry
Water and electricity share ceilings. If the leak is anywhere near a light fixture, a pot light, a ceiling fan or an electrical panel, switch that circuit off at the breaker before you put a bucket under it — not after. If water is running down a wall or you can hear it inside the wall cavity, kill power to the room and leave it off until an electrician says otherwise.
Then move what matters: electronics, rugs, furniture, anything paper. Assume the wet patch will get bigger than it is right now, because it usually does.
2. Contain it — including the ceiling itself
Buckets and towels are obvious. The part people get wrong is a bulging ceiling. When drywall sags into a dome, it's holding several litres of water, and it will eventually let go all at once — usually onto the floor, and usually at 2am. The controlled fix is to put a bucket underneath and pierce the lowest point of the bulge with a screwdriver so it drains in a stream you can manage. It feels wrong to make a hole in your own ceiling. It's far cheaper than replacing the floor underneath it.
One thing not to do: don't blast fans or a dehumidifier into a saturated cavity while water is still coming in. Moving air through wet insulation before the source is sealed spreads moisture rather than removing it.
3. Photograph everything before you clean up
Take photos and a short video of the active leak, the stain, the wet insulation and any damaged contents. Insurers assess what they can see, and "we mopped it up before you got here" is a weak position. Keep receipts for anything you buy to limit the damage — emergency mitigation costs are often reimbursable even when the roof itself isn't.
4. Understand that the leak is almost never directly above the stain
This is the single most useful thing a homeowner can know. Water enters the roof at one point, then travels — along the underside of the deck, down a rafter, across the top of the ceiling drywall — before it finds a seam, a fixture box or a nail hole to come through. A stain in the middle of a bedroom can easily start at a chimney flashing three metres away.
If you can get into the attic safely with a flashlight (dry footing, proper walkboards, nothing else), look for the wet trail rather than the wet spot: dark staining on the sheathing, damp insulation, rust on nail points, daylight at a penetration. Photograph that too. If the attic isn't safe or accessible, skip it — that's our job.
5. Leave the roof alone
Please don't go up in the rain. A wet asphalt roof is one of the most dangerous surfaces on a house, and a storm-damaged one may have hidden soft decking. DIY tarping goes badly in two directions: people get hurt, or a tarp nailed straight through good shingles turns one leak into a dozen. A proper emergency tarp is anchored with battens over the ridge — and it's a short-term dry-in, not a repair.
6. The clock that actually matters: 24 to 48 hours
Canadian indoor-air-quality guidance is consistent on this — wet building materials should be dried within 24 to 48 hours, or mould becomes the next problem on top of the water problem. That's the real reason we treat leaks as urgent even when the drip looks small. A $600 flashing repair booked this week is a very different project from a drywall, insulation and remediation job booked in three weeks.
What usually causes it, in GTA houses
- Flashing, not shingles. Chimneys, wall junctions, valleys, plumbing stacks and skylight curbs. Most "the skylight is leaking" calls we take are a flashing or curb failure around the unit, not the glass.
- Blocked eavestroughs and valleys. Water that can't leave the roof backs up under the shingle course. Common on treed lots in Etobicoke, North York and the older parts of Toronto.
- Last winter's ice dam, showing up in summer. Ice pushes water back up under the shingles and quietly wets the deck; the failure surfaces months later during a heavy rain.
- A roof that's simply finished. If you're also seeing granules in the gutters and curling edges, read our 8 signs your roof needs replacing before you pay for a patch.
Will insurance cover it?
Broadly, Ontario policies treat sudden and accidental damage differently from gradual damage. Wind tearing shingles off in a storm, and the interior water damage that follows, is usually the covered case. A flashing that has been seeping for two years is usually excluded as wear and tear, and so is the roof itself if the insurer concludes it was overdue. We walk through this properly in how Ontario storm damage claims actually work.
What happens when you call us
We take emergency leak calls across the GTA outside our normal hours, including weekends. On an emergency visit we stop the water first — dry-in the entry point or tarp it correctly — then come back in daylight to trace the real cause and quote the permanent repair, in writing. If the roof turns out to be near end of life, we'll say so instead of selling you a patch, and you can size up a full replacement yourself with our free Customize Your Roof tool before you talk to anyone.