Tile Roofing in Orlando, FL

Tile roofing spans concrete and clay tile: repairing cracked or slipped pieces, replacing the underlayment beneath tile that is still good, and installing new tile roofs. Concrete tile commonly runs $400 to $600 per square installed in this market. Orlando Roofing is licensed and insured and quotes free.

The thing most tile owners get wrong

The tile is not the waterproofing. The underlayment is.

Tile sheds the bulk of the water and takes the UV, wind and impact. What actually keeps rain out of your house is the membrane underneath. That membrane has a service life measured in decades at best, and in Central Florida heat it is usually the first thing to fail.

Which means a tile roof can look perfect from the street while the roof underneath it is finished. When we quote an older tile roof, the honest question is rarely about the tiles.

Repair, relay or replace

Cracked and slipped tiles are a straightforward repair. Debris, foot traffic from other trades, and wind-thrown branches account for most of them, and matching the profile and color on an older roof is the fiddly part.

An underlayment replacement, sometimes called a relay or a lift and relay, means carefully removing the tile, stripping and replacing the membrane, then reinstalling the same tile with new fasteners and battens. It costs far less than new tile and resets the clock on the part that matters.

Full replacement makes sense when the tiles themselves are spalling, brittle or so obsolete that broken ones cannot be matched.

How Central Florida treats tile

Heat is the underlayment's enemy. Deck temperatures under tile climb through summer and dry the membrane out from below.

Storm season is the tile's. Wind lifts unfastened field tile at hips and ridges, and debris cracks it. A cracked tile does not leak immediately, because the membrane is still there, so people leave them. Then rain gets through, sits on aged underlayment, and finds the pinhole.

Ridge and hip mortar is the other weak point. Old mortar-set ridges crack and shed, and the fix is a modern fastened or foam-set detail rather than more mortar.

The process

Assessment of tile condition, ridge and hip detailing, valleys, penetrations and, where access allows, the attic. On older roofs we lift tiles in a few places to see the underlayment directly, because that is where the answer usually is.

Written scope after that, naming what is repaired, what is relaid and what is replaced. Tile work takes longer than shingle work, with loading, batten and flashing detail all adding time.

Related pages: general roof repair for storm damage across materials, roof replacement if a change of material is on the table, and waterproofing for the chimney and penetration detailing that tile roofs are fussy about.

Why choose Orlando Roofing

We're licensed and insured, work across Greater Orlando and Central Florida, and take care on tile. Walking a tile roof badly breaks tiles, and a contractor who leaves twenty cracked pieces behind has created your next leak. Written scope, named materials, certificates with the quote.

Tile work across Orlando and out to Windermere, Winter Park and Clermont. More on the home page.

Request a free quote through the form, with photos of the roof from the ground if you have them.