Tile roofs and hail: a difficult combination
Bexar County sits at the southern end of the I-35 hail corridor and takes regular spring hail. Tile responds to hail very differently from asphalt: rather than bruising, it cracks and shatters. A single large stone can split a tile outright, and once a tile is broken the underlayment beneath is exposed to direct sun and rain — which is what actually causes the leak, usually some weeks later.
The complication is sourcing. Tile profiles change over the decades and older ones are frequently discontinued, so replacing twenty broken tiles on a 1980s roof can mean hunting for a match or re-covering a whole plane. That makes the wait for a repair longer here than in a shingle metro, which in turn makes the tarp specification more important.
Bexar County also catches the northern edge of Gulf moisture surges, so tropical remnants moving inland bring heavy rain events well away from the coast.
Working across Bexar County
We cover the metro broadly — Alamo Heights, Stone Oak, the Medical Center, Southtown, the far north along US-281 and 1604, plus Helotes, Converse and Schertz.
On tile, our method is non-negotiable: walking boards to spread load, a planned route across load-bearing points, as few crossings of the field as possible, and ballasted anchoring with no fastener entering a tile. Careless tarping breaks more tile than the storm did, and given the sourcing problem above, that is an expensive mistake to make on someone else's roof.
The newer northern suburbs carry more architectural asphalt shingle, which is considerably more straightforward — board-wrapped anchoring applies there as it would anywhere else.
What we cover in San Antonio
The full range of tarping work, specified for Bexar County conditions: emergency tarping when the roof is open and rain is coming, long-term tarping when the repair is months away, and commercial tarping for flat and low-slope buildings. Dispatch is answered 24 hours a day.