TV antennas and roof leaks

The 3 ways an tv antenna installation might result in a leak in your roof

1. Cracked tiles

Accidents happen and sometime someone walking on your roof might knowingly or unknowingly cracks one or more of your tiles. Even if the person walking on your roof is experienced and wearing appropriate footwear it can still happen – particularly if you have very brittle tiles. Usually, if you crack a tile you know about it. A good installer will have one or more tubes of roofing silicon in their van. It only take a couple of minutes to seal a cracked tile. Most homeowners have spare roof tiles so a good installer will simply tell the homeowner and ask if they have a spare tile.

2. Silicon worn away

There are many types of mounts for antennas. Some require a hole (or multiple holes) to be drilled into one or more of your tiles. At Tiger Antennas we have mounts that do not penetrate your tile at all – making it impossible to leak.

The only type of mount where penetration cannot be avoided it when someone has a tile roof and they require a tall pole with guy wires. In these situations it best to have your silicon checked every couple of years incase weathering has made it flakey.

Example. We had a customer in Normanhurst who woke abruptly around 2am one night. It was during a storm and there was a very load crashing sound on her roof. Her cat was not a happy camper. In the morning she realised that her antenna and pole had fallen down. The installation has been done over 25 years ago – it was a 4.5 metre pole with guy wires. She looked for a Hornsby-based antenna installer and phoned Tiger Antennas. We got there the same day and it only took a few minutes for us to identify the cause of the problem; On one of the guy wire connection points the silicon had worn away – probably years ago. Over the years rainwater had been seeping in and rotting away part of the joist. It was very rotted and the storm had been too much and the entire fitting popped out – and..timber…! This is quite common and is why if you have a tall pole with guy wires it’s best to inspect the silicon every couple of years.

3. Water getting in through the cable

This isn’t common but sometimes an inexperienced installer has installed things such that where the cable enters your roof there isn’t much drop in the cable. So when rain water runs down the cable on the antenna pole it can pass along the cable under a roof tile. Water can run uphill (think of siphoning fuel from a car into a bucket) but not far uphill – if that make sense.

Roof leaks and why it can be difficult to identify the cause of the leak

It is often not that straight forward to identify the cause of a roof leak. If there is a broken or slipped tile, or flakey silicon it’s easy enough but often the point of entry (of rainwater) is not directly about the leak in your house. There are usually 2 reasons for this: 1) if you have sarking in your roof (a layer of protection usually put in place for insulation purposes-typically blue in colour) then water will run down until it finds a point of entry. In these cases the cause of the problem can be several metres away from the mark on your ceiling. 2). The other situation is when water gets in a point A but runs along your ceiling (inside your roof) because the ceiling might be very slight off (in level). It then pools at the lowest point of the ceiling and causes a stain at that point.