A roof leak rarely announces itself politely. It arrives as a drip in the small hours, a brown stain that grows over breakfast, or a ceiling that sags in the middle of a storm. The first instinct is to do something dramatic. Usually the most useful thing is a calm run through a short list, in an order that keeps everyone safe and leaves you with the evidence you will want later.
The list below starts with people and belongings, then deals with electrics, because water and wiring are the real danger in a wet house. Next come photographs, which cost nothing and matter a great deal if you claim on insurance, followed by the call to your insurer and the sensible limits of what you can do yourself. The last part explains how a temporary cover turns into a lasting repair.
None of this needs you to go anywhere near the roof. Please do not climb up in the wet. Almost every step can be done from inside the house, and the rest is work for a roofer with the right access equipment. If you want to know where the cost fits in, our guide to what an emergency roof repair costs covers it once the water is under control.
Contain the water and clear the room
Start with what can be moved. Put a bucket, a washing-up bowl or a large pan under the drip, and lay a towel in the bottom to cut the splashing, which is louder and wetter than you expect. Lift rugs, books, electronics and anything made of wood away from the area, and drag larger furniture to the middle of the room under a plastic sheet if it will not go elsewhere. A drip that falls on a carpet soaks outward through the underlay, so shifting the carpet edge early saves a lot of drying later.
Look up before you do anything else. A ceiling that has turned from a stain into a bulge is holding a pool of water behind the plasterboard, and it can come down without warning. Keep people and pets out from under it. Do not stand beneath it to prod or photograph it from close range. Take the picture from the doorway with the zoom.
Several drips at once
A single stain on the ceiling usually has one source, but heavy rain can show up in two or three places at the same time, especially where water is running along a rafter or the underlay and falling at the first gap. Put a container under each, empty them before they overflow, and note which one fills fastest. That detail helps the roofer to follow the water back to the opening later.
Do not paint over, scrub or fill the stain. The edges of a mark, the colour of its rim and the way it has spread all tell a roofer something about how long the roof has been letting water in, and about whether it is a new fault or an old one that a storm has made worse.
Keep water away from electrics
Water and electricity do not mix, and a ceiling light fitting is often directly under the wettest part of a ceiling. If water is dripping from or running down a light fitting, a ceiling rose, a smoke alarm or a socket, treat the circuit as unsafe. Do not use the switch. If you can reach the consumer unit, which most homes keep near the front door or in a cupboard, without stepping through water, switch off the circuit that feeds the affected room, or the whole supply if you are unsure which it is.
Never touch a wet fitting, a switch or a plug while standing on a wet floor. If a ceiling light is already on and water is entering around it, the safest course is to turn it off at the wall switch only if the switch is dry and you are standing on a dry floor, and otherwise to leave the room and switch off at the consumer unit. A qualified electrician should check the circuit before it is used again, even if the fitting looks dry and the lights come back on.
Loft wiring and tanks
If the leak is coming through a loft, there may be cables, junction boxes, extractor fans and a cold water tank up there. Do not go into a wet loft if water is falling near any of them. Spotlights set into the ceiling can also hold water above the plasterboard, and a downlight that has been wet should be assumed unsafe until it has been looked at.
If you are unsure at any point, leave the room, close the door and call an electrician. Dry carpet is replaceable. A wet-wired room is a risk you do not need to take for the sake of saving a few belongings.
Photographs and notes before you tidy anything
Once nobody is at risk, take your phone and record what has happened before the house is put back in order. Evidence you gather in the first hour is usually stronger than anything pieced together a week later, and it is useful whether or not you ever make a claim.
Take a wide photograph of each affected room so the damage can be placed in the house, then close pictures of the stain, the drip, the bulge and any wet walls, carpets or furniture. If a loft hatch is within reach and the loft is safe to enter without going near water and wiring, a quick picture of any dark marks, wet insulation or a visible gap helps the roofer too. Add a short video if water is actively falling, because a still picture does not show how heavy a drip is.
Notes worth making
Write down the date, the time you first noticed the leak, what the weather was doing, and which side of the house it faces. If there was a storm, the date matters, because an insurer will ask if a storm hit when the damage showed up. Keep a list of damaged belongings with a rough value and, where you can, the photographs of them from before the leak.
Keep anything that was damaged until your insurer says it can be thrown away. Receipts for buckets, hire of a dehumidifier, hotel nights and emergency work all belong in the same folder as the photographs.
The fuller routine for evidence, from what to photograph on the roof to how a loss adjuster uses it, sits in our guide to making a storm damage insurance claim.
Telling your insurer, and why to ask first
If you have buildings insurance, ring your insurer as early as you reasonably can, even when you are not yet sure that you will claim. The call opens a record of the date and the circumstances, and the insurer can tell you what your policy asks of you before any work starts, which is the order that protects you.
The sensible order has two steps: get in touch with your insurer as early as you can, then arrange a temporary repair to stop the damage spreading, taking photographs before and after and keeping every receipt. The reasoning is practical. Policies differ on who may carry out repairs, how much can be spent before approval, and what must be kept as evidence, and the simplest way to avoid a dispute is to know the terms before the work begins.
What to have ready for the call
Have your policy number to hand, together with the date the damage began, a short account of what happened and the photographs you have taken. Ask whether the insurer wants to approve emergency work first, whether it uses its own approved contractors for urgent make-safe jobs, and what your excess is. Jot down who you spoke with and when.
It is also worth being clear about what a claim can and cannot achieve. Insurers draw a line between sudden storm damage and gradual damage or wear and tear, and a leak from an old, worn roof may land on the excluded side. Our general guide to whether roof damage is covered by home insurance explains how that line is drawn.
If you rent, tell your landlord or agent in writing at the same time. The landlord is usually the one who deals with the roof and the buildings policy.
What you can safely do yourself, and what you cannot
Inside the house, you can do quite a lot. Keep the water contained, move belongings, open windows to let air move once the electrics are safe, and leave any wet insulation where it is until it can be assessed. Mop the floor so nobody slips, and keep a towel by the door. Run a dehumidifier in the affected room once the supply is safe, because the sooner damp surfaces dry, the less mould has a chance to take hold.
The roof itself is another matter. A wet slate or tile is slippery, a gutter edge gives way, and a gale will take a person off a ridge. A fall from a roof or a ladder can cause serious injury, and a ladder leant against a wet wall in a storm is a bad bet. Leave the outside to a roofer who has the access equipment, a harness or edge protection, and the experience of working in wind.
Why do-it-yourself patching goes wrong
Sealant, tape and bitumen tubs from a builder's merchant are tempting, and for a few days they sometimes appear to work. The difficulty is that water travels, so a patch over the place where the stain is, or over a tile that looks cracked, rarely goes over the place where the water gets in. Sealant also hides the fault, spoils a clean surface for the proper repair, and can make the roofer's search harder.
If cover is needed urgently, a roofer can fit sheeting, a tarpaulin or a temporary patch from safe positions. How long each of those lasts, and what each does well, is explained in our guide to temporary roof repairs.
From emergency cover to a repair that holds
A tarpaulin is a stop-gap, not a repair, which is why our emergency roof repairs work always runs on to a proper fix. Once the water is controlled and the weather settles, the aim is to find the real opening and close it properly, and that starts with a survey. We give active leaks priority, and the opening is made safe before anything else. After that we trace the water back from the stain to its source, which may be a slipped tile, a failed flashing, a split valley, a blocked gutter or something more hidden.
Next we take pictures of the fault itself and send them across with the written quote, which gives a single total. The repair we recommend is the smallest job that will cure the cause. Sometimes that is re-seating a handful of tiles. Sometimes the covering is worn out and a larger repair or a section of re-covering is the better answer, and we say which and why.
Drying out and checking inside
The roof is only half the job. Insulation that has been soaked loses most of its value until it dries or is replaced, and timbers that stay wet can rot. Plasterboard that has sagged may need to be replaced, and a ceiling should not be redecorated until the moisture has gone, since paint will blister and the stain will return.
Many homeowners also want to know who is responsible for what. Roofers repair roofs, plumbers deal with pipes, and electricians check wiring, so a leak with several effects can need more than one trade. A permanent repair follows once the roof is dry enough to work on and the cause is traced.
If the cost is on your mind, the ranges and what moves them are set out in our emergency repair cost guide.
