On Thursday, January 8, 2015 3:09:18 AM UTC-5, micky wrote:
On Wed, 7 Jan 2015 23:16:27 -0800 (PST), Andy
wrote:

A friend asked me to repair a roof leak.

During rain, he gets water leaking around a light fixture.

Is this a flat roof?

Is it a pitched roof? Is the light fixture in a finished attic, or on
the ceiling below the attic? If the latter, have you been up in the
attic?

I thought about drilling a small hole from around the fixture thru the roof and shingles in order to narrow down the location.

I think drilling a hole will make another hole.

I could then re-shingle that area.

What do you think ?

Appreciate any feedback.

And leaks very often do not come from just above where they show up.
Water travels partially sideways for a variety of reasons.

Now I've only found one roof leak, when it was obvious, but I think you
should look on the roof and look for something not right.

The leak I found was around the round metal chimney. There was supposed
to be a 2" collar that was missing, and the black roof caulk had dried
up in the sun, or it wasnt' put on well. Well, I could tell it had
failed a while earlier (and the house was only 4 years old) because the
previous owner had tried to caulk from the inside, which usually doesn't
work. (Well, I bought the house in May and it started dripping in
November iirc, and it rained a lot in between so maybe it did work for a
while, but I think it's more likely it had been dripping where I didn't
see it.)

Despite leaking around the chimney, it dripped in my bedroom, below the
attic, about 4 feet from the chimney. I never bothered to figure out
how it traveled the 4 feet. I just recaulked around the chimney,, and
later I got a new collar.

But that's only one possible source of a leak.



Agree with all that. Not nearly enough info from the OP. For sure,
drilling a hole in the roof is a bad idea. He can identify the target
area on the roof by doing some measuring, if necessary and then look
for defects on the roof. That's where I'd start.