There is a brown stain on my ceiling and it has not rained in months. Is it the roof?
Often yes. The stain is from the last storm, and it only showed once the drywall dried enough to leave a ring. It can also be a condensation line from an air conditioning duct or a slow plumbing leak, which is why my inspection starts at the stain and works up through the attic before I look at the roof surface. I would rather rule out the duct than sell you a roof repair for a plumbing problem.
Do I need a whole new roof or can this be repaired?
Most of the roofs I see from the fifties through the eighties have been patched three or four times by different hands, and sorting out that history is most of the inspection. If the underlayment is still sound and the damage is local, repair. If the underlayment has cooked through under the tile or the shingles are past their life, replacement is the truthful answer. I price the repair as a real option, not as a step toward the sale.
How do Santa Ana winds affect a tile roof?
The wind does not usually break the tile. It lifts and displaces it, especially at the ridges, hips and the first course above the eave, and it drives grit and debris under the tile where it abrades the underlayment. After a Santa Ana event I walk the ridges, reset slipped tile, and check the underlayment at the eaves. That is the maintenance plan in a nutshell.
Can new shingles go over the existing roof?
California code allows one overlay in some conditions, but in this heat I do not recommend it. A second layer traps heat, ages the new shingles faster, and hides the underlayment I most need to see. On tile, an overlay is not a thing at all, because the underlayment beneath the tile is the actual waterproofing and it has to be replaced.
How often should a roof in this heat be looked at?
Once a year, ideally in the fall before the rains and after the Santa Ana season. The heat here cooks underlayment and dries out sealants faster than the coast, so a roof that goes unlooked at for five years tends to fail all at once instead of a little at a time. The maintenance plan exists for people who would rather I remember than they do.
What do you do about the gutters and the debris?
Clear them, reset the hangers, and check where they meet the fascia, because a clogged gutter in the first heavy rain overflows behind the fascia and rots it. Pine needles from the foothills and grit from the tile are the usual culprits in Highland and Redlands.