Signs You Need a Roof Replacement, Not Just a Repair in St. Louis

Updated July 29, 2026. Lane House Roofing & Exteriors, 3814 Lemay Ferry Rd, St. Louis, MO 63125. (314) 845-2166.

Direct Answer

Replace rather than repair when damage is systemic instead of isolated. If the same symptom appears across three or more roof slopes, if decking is soft or delaminated, or if a roof plane sags, repair no longer solves the problem. Isolated damage on a roof with service life remaining should be repaired.

TL;DR

• Isolated damage gets repaired. Systemic damage, the same symptom repeating across slopes, gets replaced
• Roof age is a multiplier on every other sign, not a sign by itself
• The attic settles the question faster than the driveway, and soft decking is decisive
• In the City of St. Louis, a permit turns on two tests: whether you’re using like material, and whether more than 25% of the sheathing gets replaced
• Missouri law bars a contractor from covering your deductible or negotiating your claim, which makes it a useful screen on the first call
• Weight your findings rather than counting them, because one structural finding outranks three cosmetic ones

One liner: The question isn’t what’s wrong with your roof. It’s whether the problem sits in one place or everywhere.

Key Numbers

Number	What it means	Source and date
25%	Share of roof sheathing that, once exceeded, triggers a City of St. Louis building permit	City of St. Louis Building Division, 2026 [4]
14 and 112	City Historic Districts and City Landmarks where Cultural Resources review may apply	City of St. Louis, 2026 [4]
5 business days	Window to cancel an insurance-funded roofing contract after written notice of non-coverage	RSMo 407.725 [6]
August 28, 2014	Current effective date of RSMo 407.725	Missouri Revisor of Statutes [6]
116, 155, 194 mph	ASTM D7158 Class D, G, and H design wind speeds, three-second gust	Asphalt Roofing Manufacturers Association, 2026 [1]
Class 1 to 4	UL 2218 impact resistance scale, Class 4 being the highest tier	NRCA standards summary [7]
100 square feet	One roofing square, the unit scopes are measured in	Industry standard measure
February 16, 2006	Hail slightly larger than baseball size near Bridgeton, with major roof and shingle damage across Maryland Heights, Bridgeton, Hazelwood, Florissant, and Spanish Lake	NWS St. Louis (LSX) [5]
15 to 25 years	Typical asphalt roof design range, with slate and some metal running longer	Lane House Roofing & Exteriors [10]

Repair or Replace: The Question Behind the Question

In short: Isolated damage gets repaired. Systemic damage gets replaced. The question worth answering isn’t what’s wrong with your roof, it’s whether the same problem shows up on every slope or only in one spot.

Start with something most roofing pages won’t tell you. Almost every company answering this question sells both repairs and replacements, which means they profit either way and profit more from one. We’re a St. Louis roof replacement contractor that doesn’t offer patch repairs at all. So read what follows knowing our bias, and hold the rest of this guide to the same standard you’d hold us to.

Here’s the reframe that makes the decision tractable.

Picture two houses on the same South County street. Same builder, same 1998 architectural shingles, same hailstorm last spring. On the first house, shingles are cracked and lifting along one valley near the chimney. Everywhere else, the roof looks like it did in 2019. On the second house, that same cracking shows up on the front slope, the back slope, and both sides.

Identical symptom. Opposite verdicts.

The first roof has a localized problem, probably a flashing detail that failed and let water work at the shingles around it. Fix the flashing, replace the affected courses, and the rest of the roof keeps doing its job. The second roof doesn’t have a damaged spot. It has a roofing system that reached the end of its service life at roughly the same rate everywhere, because every slope got the same sun, the same freeze-thaw cycles, and the same storms for more than two decades. There’s nothing to patch. Every course you replace is surrounded by shingles that are weeks or months behind it.

That’s the whole test. Isolated or systemic.

The next eight sections give you the evidence to run it yourself. Sections on shingles, age, and the attic cover what you can observe. Then storm damage and what Missouri law lets a contractor do with your insurance claim. Then the St. Louis permit rules almost nobody explains correctly. Then the verdict.

What Your Shingles Are Telling You From the Ground

In short: Six shingle symptoms are visible from your driveway with binoculars or a zoomed phone camera. What matters isn’t whether you find one. It’s whether the same symptom repeats on every slope.

Stay off the ladder. Almost everything in this section is readable from the ground with binoculars or a phone camera at full zoom, and roof falls send people to the hospital every spring in St. Louis. Walk the full perimeter of your house and photograph each slope separately. You want four sets of images, not four angles on the same slope. That distinction is the entire point of the exercise.

Work through these in order. They run from most diagnostic to least.

Curling and Clawing Edges

Two different things get called curling, and they point in different directions.

Cupping is when the corners and edges of a shingle lift upward, so the tab looks like a shallow bowl. It usually means the shingle has dried out and shrunk as its asphalt lost volatiles over years of sun and thermal cycling. Clawing is the opposite geometry. The edges stay flat and the middle of the tab rises. That pattern often points at moisture moving up through the roof deck from an under-ventilated attic, which is a problem underneath the shingles rather than in them.

Both mean the shingle can no longer lie flat, and a shingle that can’t lie flat can’t shed water at the laps. Cupping across one sun-baked west slope while the north slope stays flat is an aging pattern you can plan around. Cupping on all four is a roof telling you its asphalt is spent everywhere at once.

One slope, or all of them?

Cracking and Bald Spots

Look for the pattern, not the crack.

Cracks running in the same direction across many shingles, roughly parallel, usually indicate thermal splitting as the mat expands and contracts. Random cracks scattered without orientation more often trace to impact, which means hail, and that belongs in the storm section below. Bald spots are the related symptom. Where granules have worn away, you’ll see darker patches of exposed asphalt, and those patches age fast because nothing is blocking ultraviolet light anymore.

A few bald patches under a downspout outlet or below a valley have an obvious mechanical cause, which is concentrated water flow. The same bald patching spread evenly across open field areas of every slope is different. That’s the shingle surface failing as a population.

One slope, or all of them?

Missing Shingles and Blown-Off Tabs

Shingles rarely leave one at a time. They leave in clusters, and the reason is worth understanding.

Every sealed asphalt shingle has a factory-applied adhesive line called a seal strip that bonds it to the course below. Wind resistance is largely a function of that bond. ASTM D7158 classifies sealed shingles as Class D, G, or H based on calculated uplift resistance, and current classifications tie those classes to design wind speeds of roughly 116, 155, and 194 mph as three-second gusts [1]. The International Residential Code accepts Class H shingles for all wind speeds and Class G where the applicable design wind speed is lower [2].

One caution when you’re comparing what a contractor tells you against what you read elsewhere: those mph figures were revised when the underlying wind-load standard changed editions. Older material still quotes Class H at 150 mph. Same class, different basis, so the comparison misleads.

What this means from the driveway is simple. A roof that loses two tabs at a rake edge in a strong storm lost them where uplift is highest. A roof that loses a dozen tabs scattered across three slopes in the same storm has a seal strip that has released across the field, and the wind found the weakest of many weak points. The next storm will find more.

One slope, or all of them?

Failing Flashing at Chimneys, Valleys, and Vents

Flashing is the metal that seals the joints shingles can’t handle alone. It sits where the roof meets a chimney or wall, where two slopes meet in a valley, and around every vent and skylight.

From the ground with binoculars, look for metal that has lifted away from the surface, rust staining running down the shingles below a joint, or a visible gap where sealant has dried and pulled back. Chimney bases are the most productive place to look, followed by the low end of valleys.

Here the count matters in a specific way. Flashing failing at one penetration is a component failure and a straightforward repair. Flashing failing at several unrelated penetrations at the same time usually means the sealants throughout the roof reached the end of their working life together, which is an age signal rather than a component signal.

One slope, or all of them?

Granules in the Gutters

Granules are the shingle’s sunscreen. Losing them is normal at two moments and worrying at a third.

A roof installed last month sheds loose manufacturing granules for a few rain cycles. That’s expected. A roof taking direct hail sheds granules at impact points. That’s damage, covered below. But a roof in its second decade that fills the bottom of a downspout with granules after ordinary rain is shedding its protective layer because the asphalt underneath has hardened and stopped holding them.

Check where the granules collect. Scoop at the downspout outlets and at the base of the splash blocks. If your gutters are overflowing at the fascia rather than draining, you may also have a gutter problem masking the reading, and that’s worth resolving before you judge the roof.

One slope, or all of them?

Moss, Algae, and Dark Streaking

This is the symptom homeowners most often get sold a roof over, so read it carefully.

Those dark streaks running down north-facing slopes are almost always a blue-green algae, a surface organism that feeds on limestone filler in the shingle. It’s unattractive. It is not, on its own, a structural problem, and it is not a reason to replace a roof. Any contractor who points at streaking and quotes a replacement has told you something about themselves.

Moss is the one to take seriously. Moss is a plant with volume, it holds moisture against the shingle surface indefinitely, and as it thickens between courses it lifts shingle edges and breaks the water seal. Heavy moss on shaded slopes under mature trees, common in older St. Louis neighborhoods with big canopy, is a real finding.

Lichen sits between the two and is stubborn to remove without damaging granules.

One slope, or all of them?

Roof Age: The Sign That Overrules the Others

In short: Age doesn’t cause failure on its own, but it decides what every other symptom means. The same cracked shingle is an event to investigate at year eight and a stage of a process at year twenty-two.

Everything above changes meaning depending on one number. Before you weigh any symptom, find out how old the roof actually is.

Most homeowners can’t. They know what a seller said, or what a neighbor guessed, or what the previous owner mentioned in passing. That’s not a number you should make a five-figure decision on.

How to Find Out When Your Roof Was Actually Installed

Start with public permit records. The City of St. Louis Building Division publishes a permit search by property address, and St. Louis County maintains permit records through its Department of Transportation and Public Works [3]. If a re-roof permit was pulled on your house, the date is sitting there.

One caveat that matters. In the City, a straightforward replacement using like material that disturbs 25% or less of the roof sheathing generally doesn’t require a building permit at all [4]. So a permit record proves a roof was replaced. The absence of one proves nothing. Plenty of legitimate City re-roofs never generated a record.

Three other places the date hides:

• Your closing documents. Seller’s disclosure forms often list roof age, and sometimes attach the original invoice.
• The attic. Roofers frequently chalk the install date on the underside of the sheathing or on a rafter near the access hatch. It costs nothing to look while you’re up there.
• The shingles themselves. Product lines get discontinued. A roofer who can identify the shingle can usually bracket the install window within a few years.

Is Your Roof Too Old to Be Worth Repairing?

Lane House puts the typical design range at 15 to 25 years, with slate and some metal systems running longer [10]. Treat that as a range, not a deadline, because two identical roofs installed the same week can land at opposite ends of it.

The factor that moves them most is attic ventilation. A roof needs balanced airflow, intake low at the soffits and exhaust high at the ridge, so heat and moisture leave the attic instead of accumulating under the deck. When that balance is missing, the attic runs hot and the shingles bake from below as well as above. Add St. Louis freeze-thaw cycling through the winter and the asphalt hardens years ahead of schedule. This is why the neighbor with the same builder and the same shingles is on year twenty-four while you’re replacing at seventeen.

Which cuts the other way too. Houses on a tract street were built the same year, with the same materials, under the same weather. When dumpsters start appearing on driveways up and down the block, that isn’t coincidence, it’s a shared timeline. Your roof is probably on it.

Worth checking while you’re at it: whether your current roof is a second layer installed over an older one. An overlay ages faster because it sits on a heat-retaining surface rather than on ventilated decking, and it changes the replacement conversation entirely.

Which brings us to the rule this section exists to deliver.

Age is a multiplier, not a symptom. A single cracked slope on a roof in year eight is an event with a cause worth finding, and the cause is usually fixable. The same cracked slope in year twenty-two is not an event. It’s the visible edge of a process happening across the whole roof, and repairing the part you can see spends money on the symptom while the rest of the roof keeps moving.

What the Attic Tells You That the Driveway Cannot

In short: Shingle symptoms are arguable. A wet, soft roof deck is not. Ten minutes in the attic settles the repair-or-replace question faster than anything you can see from the ground.

Before anything else. Step only on the joists or on a board laid across them, never on the drywall between them, because it will not hold you. Bring a flashlight and wear a dust mask around older insulation. If your access is a small hatch over a stairwell, or the space is a crawl with no safe footing, stop and have someone do this who has the right footing and equipment. Nothing in this section is worth a fall through a ceiling.

Go up on a bright day, mid-morning. Work through these four in order.

Water Stains on Ceilings and Roof Leak Signs Inside

Start below the attic, in the rooms themselves. Look at ceilings near exterior walls, around chimneys, and below valleys where two roof planes meet. You’re looking for rings, discoloration, or a faint brown edge that marks where water spread and stopped.

Then apply the rule that matters more than the stain itself.

A single stain that dried out years ago and never returned is history, and history is not a reason to replace a roof. A stain that came back after somebody patched it is different information entirely. So is a second stain in a different room. Recurrence in one place means the repair missed the source. Appearance in multiple places means the roof is admitting water at more than one point, which is the systemic pattern showing up on your ceiling.

Daylight Through the Roof Boards

Now go up. Turn off the lights, close the hatch behind you if you can do it safely, and give your eyes a full minute to adjust.

Most guides stop there and tell you that any daylight is bad. That’s wrong often enough to be worth correcting. Thin lines of light along the ridge, or steady light at gable vents and soffit edges, are usually ventilation openings working as designed. That’s air moving through the attic, which is what you want.

What you’re looking for is different: pinpoints or ragged patches of light in the open field of a slope, away from any vent, ridge, or edge. That’s a hole. Where light passes, water passes. A finding like that puts you past the diagnostic stage described in this article and into a call today.

Soft or Spongy Decking

This is the finding that converts more repair conversations to replacement conversations than any other, and you can check it with your hand.

Reach up between the rafters and press flat-palmed against the underside of the sheathing. Healthy plywood or OSB pushes back firm with no give. What you’re feeling for is flex, sponginess, or a damp coolness. Any of those mean the panel has absorbed water and begun to delaminate, which is the layers of the plywood separating from each other. Delaminated decking will not hold a nail reliably, and shingles are held down by nails.

Pay attention to the lower few feet of each slope, near the eaves. St. Louis winters produce ice dams, ridges of ice that form at the eave as snowmelt refreezes and back meltwater up underneath the shingles. Repeated over several winters, that soaks the decking from above and rots it quietly, which is why sag sometimes appears in older homes with no history of an obvious leak.

While your hand is up there, sort out what kind of moisture you have, because this is where most people get it wrong.

Condensation shows up as dampness or frost spread fairly evenly across the underside of the deck, often worst in winter, sometimes with the insulation below it damp too. That is usually an attic ventilation failure, not a roof leak, and replacing the roof without fixing the airflow reproduces the problem on new shingles.

Intrusion looks different. It runs. You’ll see a defined path, a dark streak or trail leading down from a single point upslope, often with staining on the rafter beside it. That’s water entering at one place and traveling.

Same wet deck, two different problems, two different fixes.

A Sagging Roofline

Look down the length of each rafter bay, then go outside and look at the roof from across the street. The lines should be straight. A dip, wave, or visible bow means something structural has taken on load it can’t carry, usually because moisture has been working on the decking or the framing for a long time.

Stop reading and call someone. This is the one finding in this guide that doesn’t wait for the rest of your research.

One last note that connects this section to the paperwork. If a contractor tells you a meaningful share of your decking needs replacing, that’s not only a cost item. In the City of St. Louis, replacing more than 25% of the roof sheathing is one of the two tests that triggers a building permit requirement [4].

Which is the honest close to this section: once water has reached the sheathing and stayed there, the repair conversation is mostly over. You can replace shingles. You cannot fasten them to a substrate that’s coming apart.

After a St. Louis Storm: Wind, Hail, and What Your Insurer Is Actually Looking For

In short: Carriers pay for functional damage, meaning damage that shortens the roof’s service life. They generally don’t pay for cosmetic damage. Knowing which one you have, before you call anyone, changes every conversation that follows.

A storm complicates the repair-or-replace question in a specific way. Up to now you’ve been asking what condition your roof is in. After a storm you’re also asking what happened, when it happened, and whether it’s documented. Those are different questions with different evidence.

Functional Damage vs Cosmetic Damage

This distinction runs the entire claims process, and almost nobody explains it to homeowners before their first adjuster visit.

Functional damage compromises the roof’s ability to shed water or shortens its service life. A shingle with a fractured mat, a released seal strip, a puncture, displaced or missing tabs, damaged flashing.

Cosmetic damage changes how the roof looks without changing what it does. Scuffing, minor granule displacement that doesn’t expose the mat, dents in metal accessories that don’t perforate them.

The same hailstorm can produce both on one roof. An adjuster is looking for the first category, and the argument you sometimes hear that damage is damage doesn’t survive contact with a policy. Some carriers also attach cosmetic damage exclusions to their policies, so it’s worth knowing whether yours does before an event rather than after.

What Hail Actually Does to a Shingle

Here’s the part that surprises people, and it explains a lot of confused roof timelines.

Hail doesn’t have to remove granules to hurt a shingle. A stone striking with enough energy can fracture the asphalt mat underneath while leaving the surface looking close to normal from the ground. Roofers call the result a bruise. Press on one and it gives slightly, like a soft spot on fruit.

What matters is what happens next. That fracture is a break in the shingle’s waterproofing layer with granules sitting over it. Water works into it, freeze-thaw cycling widens it, and the shingle fails on a schedule set by the storm rather than by its age. Which is why a roof can look fine in April, pass a casual glance from the driveway, and start leaking eighteen months later. The damage was there the whole time. It was under the surface.

Two consequences follow. First, a ground-level look after a hailstorm proves little. Second, the storm date matters, because your claim is tied to an event.

That date is retrievable. The National Weather Service office in St. Louis maintains a public archive of significant weather events for the region, including a February 2006 storm in which hail slightly larger than baseball size fell near Bridgeton and homes across Maryland Heights, Bridgeton, Hazelwood, Florissant, and Spanish Lake sustained major roof and shingle damage [5]. If you’re trying to establish when your roof took a hit, that archive is a better starting point than memory.

If you see chalk marks on your shingles after an inspection, that’s normal practice. Inspectors and adjusters commonly mark suspected impact points so they can be counted and photographed within a measured test area.

While you’re assessing, look at the rest of the exterior. Hail that reached your roof also reached your siding, window wraps, and gutter faces, and damage on those surfaces is often easier to see and helps establish the event.

What Missouri Law Lets a Roofing Contractor Do With Your Claim

After any significant storm, St. Louis neighborhoods fill with door knockers. Missouri statute draws firm lines around what those contractors may offer you, and knowing the lines turns them into a screening tool.

Under RSMo 407.725, a contractor may not advertise or promise to pay or rebate any portion of your insurance deductible as an inducement to sell you goods or services, and the statute defines that broadly enough to include allowances, discounts against fees, gifts, credits, and referral fees [6]. Separately, a contractor may not represent or negotiate, or offer to represent or negotiate, on your behalf on an insurance claim connected to roof work.

The statute also gives you a cancellation right most homeowners have never heard of. If you sign a contract for work to be paid under a property and casualty policy, you may cancel it before midnight on the fifth business day after you receive written notice from your insurer that all or part of the claim isn’t covered. The contractor is required to give you that notice in bold type and attach a detachable cancellation form to the contract.

Violations are treated as an unfair practice under the Missouri Merchandising Practices Act.

So here’s your screen. If someone standing on your porch offers to cover your deductible, waive it, work around it, or handle the negotiation with your carrier for you, they’ve described conduct the statute prohibits. That tells you what you need to know about how they run the rest of a job.

What a contractor can properly do is inspect, document, and provide a detailed written assessment of the damage. That’s the legitimate version of help, and it’s the version worth asking for.

Document It Before Anyone Touches It

Emergency work changes the evidence. Before a tarp goes up or anything gets swapped out, photograph the damage from multiple angles with the date attached, note which storm you believe caused it, and keep the images somewhere other than your phone’s camera roll. Get the written assessment in your hands before work starts, not after.

One forward-looking note for the replacement decision itself. UL 2218 rates roofing materials for impact resistance on a scale of Class 1 through Class 4, with Class 4 the highest tier [7]. In a market with St. Louis storm history, that rating is worth raising when you’re choosing what goes back on.

The St. Louis Permit and Code Reality Most Homeowners Never Hear

In short: Whether your roof replacement needs a permit depends on your address and on how much decking gets replaced. St. Louis City and St. Louis County are separate authorities with separate rules, and historic districts add a third layer.

Ask five St. Louis roofers whether a replacement needs a permit and you’ll get five confident answers. The published rules are more specific than any of them, and the specifics happen to matter for the decision this article is about.

Do You Need a Permit to Replace a Roof in St. Louis?

In the City of St. Louis, it depends on two tests.

The Building Division lists roof work in both of its permit categories. A permit is required for an entire new roof when the work is not replacement of like material, and/or when more than 25% of the roof sheathing is removed and replaced. A permit is usually not required for roof replacement done with like material and replacement of 25% or less of the roof sheathing [4].

Read those two together and the rule comes into focus. Swapping worn architectural shingles for comparable architectural shingles, with most of your decking staying put, generally falls outside the permit requirement. Changing to a different material, or opening up more than a quarter of your sheathing, puts you inside it.

Here’s why that matters to a homeowner making a repair-or-replace decision rather than filing paperwork.

Earlier you were asked to press on the underside of your roof deck. If an inspection finds enough soft or delaminated sheathing to cross that 25% line, you’ve learned two things in the same moment. Your project now requires a permit, and your roof has substrate damage across a meaningful share of its area. The second fact is the one that settles the repair question. The code threshold is doing diagnostic work.

It also explains the caveat about permit lookups. Because a like-material replacement under the threshold generally doesn’t require a permit in the City, a search of permit records can come back empty on a house that was legitimately re-roofed.

City or County: Which Rules Apply to Your Address

This is the part that trips up nearly every article written about St. Louis roofing.

St. Louis City is an independent city. It is not part of St. Louis County, it has its own Building Division, and its rules are the ones described above. St. Louis County is a separate jurisdiction that permits through its Department of Transportation and Public Works. The County requires building plans for permits generally, while noting that certain qualifying re-roofing and roof covering replacement projects don’t require a plan submission, as set out in its own re-roofing publication [8]. Worth being precise about the distinction: skipping plan submission is not the same as skipping the permit.

There’s a further wrinkle inside the County. Many County municipalities run their own code enforcement or contract it, so the authority having jurisdiction can change from one municipality to the next.

Take two addresses Lane House serves. A house in Mehlville sits in unincorporated South County, so the County is the authority. A house in Soulard sits in the City, under the Building Division rules above, and quite possibly under a fourth set of requirements described next. Same metro, same contractor, different rulebooks.

If you’re in the County, confirm with your specific municipality before assuming anything. That single phone call is the difference between a smooth project and a stop-work order.

Historic Districts Change the Answer

The City notes that for property located in a City Historic District or designated as a City Landmark, in most instances a building permit is required by the Cultural Resources Office even when the Building Code does not require one, specifically to protect the building’s exterior appearance. The City lists 14 historic districts and 112 landmarks, with design standards available through that office [4].

For a roof, that can reach shingle color and profile, not only whether the work happens. A homeowner in Soulard, The Hill, Carondelet, or Tower Grove South can satisfy every Building Code requirement and still be out of compliance on appearance review.

No competitor page covering this topic mentions it. If your address is in one of those districts, ask about Cultural Resources review before you sign anything.

“Licensed in Missouri” Doesn’t Mean What You Think

Missouri does not issue a statewide roofing contractor license. There is no such credential to hold [9]. Licensing sits with cities and counties, which means licensed describes a local business license rather than a trade qualification.

So retire the question “are you licensed” and ask better ones:

• Which municipality licenses your business, and what’s the number?
• What are your general liability and workers’ compensation coverage limits, and can I see current certificates?
• Will you pull the permit for this job?

That last one carries weight. The contractor should pull it. A contractor who asks you to pull it as an owner-builder is moving liability onto you.

Credentials that do carry independent meaning come from outside government: manufacturer certifications like Owens Corning’s Preferred Contractor program, and third-party ratings such as Better Business Bureau accreditation. Lane House holds both, and you can see completed St. Louis roof replacements to judge the work itself.

How to Read a Roof Inspection Report Without Being an Expert

In short: You don’t need to know roofing to judge a roofing report. You need to know what a complete one contains, and the fastest test is whether the findings are shown slope by slope with photographs.

Everything up to this point has been you gathering evidence. At some point a professional gets on your roof and hands you a document. This section is about reading that document without taking anyone’s word for it.

What a Real Assessment Includes

A complete assessment puts these in writing:

• Photographs of the specific conditions cited, organized by roof slope, not a generic gallery
• Measurements in squares, one square being 100 square feet, so the scope has a number behind it
• The number of roofing layers found, since a second layer changes the work and the cost
• Decking condition, including where soft or delaminated sheathing was found and roughly how much
• Flashing and penetrations, meaning chimneys, valleys, vents, and skylights assessed individually
• Ventilation, both intake at the soffits and exhaust at the ridge, because a roof that failed early often failed for this reason
• What is in good condition, not only what isn’t

That last item does more work than people expect. An honest assessment tells you your north slope is fine, your flashing is sound, your ventilation checks out. A document where every line is a problem isn’t an assessment. It’s a quote wearing a costume.

If someone tells you your roof is failing and hands you a price with no photographs, you’ve received an opinion. Opinions are free and worth roughly that.

The Slope-by-Slope Question

Here’s the sentence to say out loud, and it’s the whole article compressed into one request:

Walk me through each slope separately. What did you find on each one?

Everything above was building toward your ability to ask that. A contractor recommending full replacement is claiming your damage is systemic, and systemic means the same condition repeating across planes. That claim is demonstrable. They should be able to show you cupping on the west slope and cupping on the east slope and cupping on the north slope, with images.

If the answer comes back specific and consistent across every plane, the recommendation is supported and you can act on it with confidence.

If the answer comes back vague, or the photographs all turn out to be the same slope from different angles, or the reply is a general statement about the roof’s age, you’ve found the edge of what they actually know. That isn’t necessarily dishonesty. Plenty of roofs get assessed from the driveway and the front ladder. But it means the recommendation rests on less than it appeared to.

Red Flags in the First Conversation

• Pricing that expires today. Roofs don’t get cheaper or more expensive by Friday. Deadline pressure exists to prevent second opinions.
• A refusal to put findings in writing. No legitimate reason exists for this.
• Pressure to sign before your insurer has responded. Related to the cancellation right described above, which exists precisely because this happens.
• A “free inspection” that arrives as a contract. An inspection produces a document about your roof. If what shows up needs your signature to proceed, it was a sales appointment.
• Anything the statute prohibits. Offers to cover, waive, or absorb your deductible, or to negotiate the claim on your behalf.
• Reluctance to pull the permit. It moves liability to you.

None of this requires roofing knowledge. It requires reading a document and noticing what isn’t in it.

When Repair Genuinely Is the Right Call

In short: Repair is the better decision when the damage has one identifiable cause, sits on one part of the roof, and the roof still has service life worth protecting. Four situations fit that description.

This guide opened by asking you to hold it to the standard you’d hold us to. Here’s where that gets tested, because Lane House doesn’t offer patch repairs. If your evidence points to repair, this section says so and sends you elsewhere.

Four Situations Where Repair Is the Better Decision

1. A young roof with point damage. A limb came down, a pipe boot split, a section of flashing lifted. One thing went wrong, you can point at it, and the rest of the roof is doing its job. Fix the thing.
2. Storm damage confined to one slope. This is the isolated-versus-systemic test passing in your favor. Wind came from one direction, took tabs off one exposure, and the other three planes came through clean. On a roof that isn’t near end of life, that’s a repair.
3. A flashing or penetration failure at any age. Worth knowing: rubber pipe boots, the collars sealing your plumbing vents, crack and fail years before shingles do. They’re one of the most common sources of residential roof leaks and one of the least expensive things on a roof to replace. If your leak traces to a boot, a valley, or chimney counterflashing, that’s a component failure, not a roof failure. Replacing an entire roof to solve it means spending five figures on a problem that costs a small fraction of that.

If a contractor looks at a leak and recommends replacement without first establishing whether a penetration caused it, ask the slope-by-slope question.

4. A roof in its first decade with sound decking and intact seal strips. Some cosmetic wear, maybe a few damaged shingles, but you pressed on the deck and it pushed back firm. This roof has years left. Protecting them is what repair is for.

The Honest Limits of a Patch

Repair is the right answer in those cases. It still has limits worth knowing before you choose it.

New shingles won’t match. Your existing roof has weathered for years. A patch will be visible, sometimes for the life of the roof. Cosmetic, but nobody likes finding out afterward.

Seal strips bond imperfectly to aged shingles. New shingles seal best to neighbors in similar condition. Patch an old roof and the repaired area is more vulnerable to wind uplift than the same patch on a newer roof. This is the mechanical reason the age multiplier is a physical fact rather than a rule of thumb.

Repairs come with a workmanship warranty on the repaired area, not a system warranty on the roof.

Two patches in different places within a year is not two repairs. It’s a pattern. The third one buys you information you already have.

Is It Worth Repairing an Old Roof in St. Louis?

Apply the age multiplier and the answer usually writes itself.

Money spent on a roof with fifteen years left is protecting fifteen years. The same money on a roof with two years left is buying two, and buying them on a surface where the patch bonds poorly and the next failure is somewhere you haven’t looked yet. Neither is wrong in principle. They’re different trades, and the roof’s remaining service life is what tells you which one you’re making.

There’s one situation where an old roof gets repaired for good reason regardless of the math: you need it to hold through winter while you plan and budget properly. That’s a legitimate decision made with open eyes. What it isn’t is a solution.

When a Roof Is Genuinely Beyond Repair

Pulling together the thresholds from across this guide, replacement is the answer when any of these are true:

• The same symptom repeats across multiple slopes. The systemic pattern.
• Decking is soft, spongy, or delaminated over a meaningful area. You can replace shingles. You cannot fasten them to a substrate that’s coming apart.
• A roof plane visibly sags. Structure is involved.
• The roof is past its service life and showing field-wide wear. Not one symptom, the whole surface.
• Repairs have recurred in different locations. Different locations is the operative phrase.
• The roof is already a second layer. An overlay generally can’t take another one, so the option you may have been counting on isn’t available.

One of those makes replacement likely. Two or more makes it the clear call.

And if you’ve read this far and landed in the repair column instead, take the cheaper answer. Call a roofer who does repair work, get the pipe boot replaced, and come back in eight years.

Your Replacement Decision Checklist

In short: Not every sign carries the same weight. One sagging roof plane outranks three cosmetic findings. Sort what you found into three tiers and the verdict follows.

You’ll see checklists elsewhere that tell you to count your signs and replace if you hit three. Counting treats a structural failure and a patch of moss as the same unit, which they aren’t. Sort by weight instead.

The Rule

One Tier 1 finding, or two Tier 2 findings, or one Tier 2 finding plus any Tier 3 finding, points to replacement. Tier 3 findings on their own point to repair or monitoring.

The tiers below are Lane House’s framework for weighing the evidence in this guide, not an industry standard.

The Checklist

Finding	Where you checked it	Tier
A roof plane visibly sags or dips	Attic and from across the street	1
Decking is soft, spongy, or delaminated over a meaningful area	Attic, palm test	1
Daylight through the open field of a slope, away from vents	Attic, lights off	1
The same shingle symptom repeats across three or more slopes	Ground, slope by slope	2
Roof is at or past its service life with wear across the whole field	Permit records, closing documents	2
Leaks have recurred in different locations	Ceilings and attic	2
The roof is already a second layer over an older one	Attic edge or eave	2
Documented storm damage that is functional, not cosmetic	Assessment and NWS records	2
Granules accumulating at downspout outlets	Gutters and splash blocks	3
Heavy moss on shaded slopes	Ground, north exposures	3
Cupping or clawing on a single slope	Ground, binoculars	3
Missing tabs at rake or ridge edges after a storm	Ground and yard	3
A failing pipe boot or flashing at one penetration	Attic and ground	3

 

Dark streaking that turns out to be algae is not on this list. It isn’t a finding.

You’ll notice this guide quotes no replacement prices. Pitch, layer count, decking condition, and material drive the number far too much for a range to mean anything useful, and any real figure comes from a measured scope rather than an article.

If You Land Right at the Edge

One Tier 2 finding and nothing else is the genuinely ambiguous case, and it’s the one where a professional assessment earns its cost. You have real evidence of a real problem and not enough to know its extent. That’s not indecision on your part. It’s the limit of what anyone can determine from the ground and the attic.

The same goes for anything you couldn’t check. An attic you couldn’t safely enter leaves the three Tier 1 findings unverified, and those are the ones that settle the question.

Take This With You

Fill it in before anyone comes out, then compare it against what the assessment reports.

If a contractor’s findings line up with yours and add detail you couldn’t reach, that’s a good sign. If their findings and yours describe two different roofs, ask the slope-by-slope question and see which version survives the photographs.

Getting a Straight Answer in St. Louis

In short: If your checklist pointed to repair, call a roofer who does repairs. If it pointed to replacement, the next step is a written assessment you can hold against the standard above.

Two ways to finish this.

If your findings landed in Tier 3, or in the repair column, take the cheaper answer. Lane House doesn’t do patch repairs, so we’re not the call. Find a repair-capable roofer, get the boot or the flashing handled, and put the money you didn’t spend toward the replacement you’ll need in a decade.

If you have a Tier 1 finding, or two Tier 2 findings, or one Tier 2 alongside anything in Tier 3, the evidence points to replacement and the next step is getting it confirmed by someone who can reach what you couldn’t.

What the Assessment Includes

Here’s what you get, measured against the standard set out above.

Photographs organized by slope, of the specific conditions found. Measurements in squares. The number of roofing layers. Decking condition, including where soft or delaminated sheathing turned up and how much. Flashing, valleys, chimneys, and vents assessed individually. Intake and exhaust ventilation, because a roof that failed early often failed for that reason. And what’s in sound condition, not only what isn’t.

If a storm is involved, that means inspecting, documenting, and providing a detailed written assessment of the damage. Missouri law is specific about what a contractor may and may not do around an insurance claim, and documentation is the legitimate side of that line.

The assessment is free, including a no-contact consultation if you’d rather not have anyone inside.

A Detail Worth Knowing

Lane House doesn’t bill for work until the job is finished, with the exception of partial payment on special-order material. Financing is available for the full amount [10].

That structure exists because the fear underneath this entire article is being taken advantage of by someone who knows more than you do about your own house. Getting paid after the work is done is one answer to that.

The Company

In business since 2003, founded by Kerry House after decades in the trade, working out of 3814 Lemay Ferry Rd in South County. BBB Accredited with an A+ rating and an Owens Corning Preferred Contractor [10]. Those are the credentials described above as meaningful, because a third party issues them and can revoke them.

Serving St. Louis City, St. Louis County, South County, the Metro East, and Southern Illinois.

Request a free roof assessment or call (314) 845-2166, Monday through Friday, 8:00 AM to 4:00 PM.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I need a permit to replace my roof in St. Louis?

It depends on your address and the scope. In the City of St. Louis, a building permit is required for an entire new roof when the work is not replacement of like material, and/or when more than 25% of the roof sheathing is removed and replaced. A permit is usually not required when the replacement uses like material and replaces 25% or less of the sheathing. St. Louis County permits separately through its Department of Transportation and Public Works, and many County municipalities run their own code enforcement, so confirm with the authority for your specific address.

Does Lane House Roofing & Exteriors do roof repairs?

No. Lane House specializes exclusively in full roof replacements and complete exterior renovations, and does not offer minor patch repairs. If your roof needs a repair rather than a replacement, call a repair-capable roofing contractor.

How long does a roof last in St. Louis?

Lane House puts the typical design range at 15 to 25 years, with some slate and metal systems lasting longer. Where a specific roof lands in that range depends heavily on attic ventilation, sun exposure by slope, and storm history. A roof with poor intake and exhaust ventilation can reach end of life years ahead of an identical roof next door.

How do I find out how old my roof is?

Start with public permit records. The City of St. Louis Building Division publishes a permit search by property address, and St. Louis County maintains permit records through its Department of Transportation and Public Works. Also check your closing documents and seller’s disclosure, and look for an install date chalked on the underside of the roof sheathing in the attic. Note that a City replacement using like material under the 25% sheathing threshold may not have required a permit at all, so an empty record does not prove the roof was never replaced.

Is it worth repairing an old roof?

It depends on how much service life the repair is protecting. Money spent on a roof with fifteen years left protects fifteen years. The same money on a roof with two years left buys two, on a surface where new shingles bond poorly to aged neighbors. Repairing an old roof to get through a season while you plan and budget is a legitimate decision, but it is not a solution.

Does dark streaking on my roof mean I need a new roof?

Usually not. Dark streaks running down north-facing slopes are almost always algae, a surface organism that feeds on limestone filler in the shingle. It affects appearance rather than performance. Moss is the growth to take seriously, because it holds moisture against the shingle and lifts courses as it thickens.

Can I put a new roof over an old one?

Sometimes, though an overlay ages faster than a roof installed on clean decking because it sits on a heat-retaining surface, and it hides the condition of the sheathing underneath. If your roof is already a second layer, a third is generally not an option, which means a tear-off. In the City of St. Louis, work that is not replacement of like material triggers a permit requirement.

Does homeowners insurance cover roof replacement?

Coverage depends on your policy and on what caused the damage. Carriers generally distinguish functional damage, which reduces the roof’s ability to shed water or shortens its service life, from cosmetic damage, which changes appearance only. Some policies carry cosmetic damage exclusions. Your carrier and your policy documents are the authority on what yours covers.

Can a roofing contractor pay my insurance deductible in Missouri?

No. RSMo 407.725 provides that a contractor shall not advertise or promise to pay or rebate any portion of an insurance deductible as an inducement to sell goods or services, and defines that broadly enough to include allowances, discounts against fees, gifts, credits, and referral fees. The same statute provides that a contractor shall not represent or negotiate on your behalf on an insurance claim. Two things are commonly misreported about it: the current version applies to contractors working on residential or commercial real estate rather than residential only, and violations are treated as an unfair practice under the Missouri Merchandising Practices Act, which is a civil consumer-protection mechanism rather than a criminal one.

What is the difference between a manufacturer warranty and a workmanship warranty?

A manufacturer warranty covers defects in the roofing material itself and is issued by the material manufacturer. A workmanship warranty covers the installation and is issued by the contractor who did the work. They are separate, and a repair carries a workmanship warranty on the repaired area rather than a system warranty on the whole roof.

How long does a roof replacement take?

Lane House completes most residential roof replacements in one to three days, depending on the size of the home and the complexity of the roof pitch.

Can a roof be replaced in winter?

Yes. Lane House performs roof replacements year-round, with extra precautions in winter to keep the home watertight during the work. Warm weather is preferable, but waiting until summer is not always sensible when a leak has already appeared.

Do solar panels have to be removed for a roof replacement?

Usually yes. Most solar panels are bolted or mounted into the existing roofing material and need to be removed by a licensed professional so they come off safely and correctly. Some types can occasionally stay in place, but that is rare, and the assessment is where it gets determined.

Could my old roof contain asbestos?

It is possible on older roofs. Some older roofing materials contain asbestos or other hazardous substances, which is why all debris from a tear-off has to be removed and disposed of legally and properly rather than treated as ordinary construction waste.

Will a new roof lower my energy bills?

Possibly, though the roof surface is rarely the main driver. Rising bills more often point at attic ventilation and insulation, which may or may not involve the roof itself. Treat specific savings claims carefully and have the ventilation assessed rather than assuming the shingles are the problem.

Definition Bank

Term	Definition
Isolated damage	Damage traceable to one identifiable cause in one location, with the rest of the roof sound
Systemic failure	The same condition appearing across multiple roof planes, indicating the roof is failing as a whole rather than at a point
Cupping	Shingle corners and edges lifting upward so the tab bows, usually from asphalt drying and shrinking with age and heat
Clawing	Shingle edges staying flat while the center rises, often pointing to moisture moving up through the deck from an under-ventilated attic
Granule	The mineral surface layer on an asphalt shingle that blocks ultraviolet light and protects the asphalt beneath
Seal strip	The factory-applied adhesive line bonding each shingle to the course below, which supplies most of a roof’s wind resistance
Roof sheathing	The structural panels, usually plywood or OSB, that shingles are fastened to. Also called decking
Delamination	The layers of a plywood panel separating after absorbing water, leaving decking unable to hold a nail reliably
Hail bruising	A fracture in the asphalt mat caused by hail impact, often with little visible surface change, that shortens the shingle’s life
Functional damage	Damage that reduces the roof’s ability to shed water or shortens its service life
Cosmetic damage	Damage that changes appearance without affecting performance or service life
Flashing	Metal installed where the roof meets a wall, chimney, valley, or penetration, directing water back onto the roof surface
Pipe boot	The collar sealing a plumbing vent pipe where it passes through the roof, and one of the most common sources of residential roof leaks
Roofing square	100 square feet of roof area, the unit contractors measure and price in
Overlay	A roof installed over an existing layer rather than after a tear-off. Also called a second layer
Ice dam	A ridge of ice forming at the eaves during freeze-thaw cycles that backs meltwater up under the shingles
Authority having jurisdiction	The government body whose building rules apply to your address, which in the St. Louis metro may be the City, the County, or a specific municipality
Tear-off	Complete removal of existing roofing down to the deck before new material is installed

Entity Cards

Lane House Roofing & Exteriors

Property	Value
Business type	Roofing contractor and exterior renovation company
Address	3814 Lemay Ferry Rd, St. Louis, MO 63125
Phone	(314) 845-2166
Hours	Monday to Friday, 8:00 AM to 4:00 PM
In business since	2003, founded by Kerry House after decades in the trade
Scope	Full roof replacement, siding, windows, gutters. Does not offer patch repairs
Credentials	BBB Accredited with an A+ rating; Owens Corning Preferred Contractor
Service area	St. Louis City, St. Louis County, South County, Metro East, Southern Illinois
Estimates	Free, including no-contact consultations
Payment	Billed on completion, except partial payment on special-order material. Financing available

City of St. Louis Building Division

Property	Value
Jurisdiction	City of St. Louis, an independent city separate from St. Louis County
Permit required when	Roof work is not replacement of like material, and/or more than 25% of roof sheathing is removed and replaced
Permit usually not required when	Replacement uses like material and replaces 25% or less of the sheathing
Additional review	Cultural Resources Office review for City Historic Districts and Landmarks, which may require a permit where the Building Code does not
Permit Section	1200 Market, Room 425, St. Louis, MO 63103

St. Louis County Department of Transportation and Public Works

Property	Value
Jurisdiction	St. Louis County, including unincorporated areas such as Mehlville
Position on plans	Certain qualifying re-roofing and roof covering replacement projects do not require plan submission, per its re-roofing publication
Important distinction	Skipping plan submission is not the same as skipping the permit
Municipal variation	Many County municipalities run or contract their own code enforcement, so the governing authority varies by address

RSMo 407.725

Property	Value
Full citation	Missouri Revised Statutes Section 407.725
Current effective date	August 28, 2014
Applies to	Contractors working on residential or commercial real estate
Prohibits	Advertising or promising to pay or rebate any portion of an insurance deductible; representing or negotiating on an owner’s behalf on an insurance claim
Requires	A five-business-day cancellation right with bold-type notice and a detachable cancellation form
Enforcement	Violations treated as an unfair practice under the Missouri Merchandising Practices Act

Sources

1. Asphalt Roofing Manufacturers Association. “Using ASTM D7158 Where Standard Conditions Do Not Apply.” 2026. asphaltroofing.org
2. International Residential Code, Section R905.2.6.1, Classification of Asphalt Shingles.
3. City of St. Louis Building Division, Search Permits by Address. St. Louis County Department of Transportation and Public Works, residential building records.
4. City of St. Louis. “When a Residential Building Permit is Needed.” Building Division, Department of Public Safety. Updated 2026. stlouis-mo.gov
5. National Weather Service, St. Louis (LSX). Significant Weather Event Reviews, Major Hail Event, February 16, 2006. weather.gov/lsx
6. Missouri Revised Statutes, Section 407.725. Missouri Revisor of Statutes. Effective August 28, 2014 (L. 2011 S.B. 101, A.L. 2014 S.B. 610). revisor.mo.gov
7. UL 2218, Impact Resistance of Prepared Roof Covering Materials, as summarized in National Roofing Contractors Association standards guidance.
8. St. Louis County Department of Transportation and Public Works. “Requirements for a Permit” and “Re-roofing Permits.” stlouiscountymo.gov
9. Missouri Department of Natural Resources. Permits by Business Type: Roofing Contractor. dnr.mo.gov
10. Lane House Roofing & Exteriors. Company website and published FAQ. lanehouseroofingandexteriors.com