Visitors admire Alhambra's tile roofs, and the admiration is justified and irrelevant. The tile is the roof's armor and its architecture; it is not its waterproofing. Beneath every clay and concrete tile roof in the San Gabriel Valley lies the felt underlayment that actually keeps the rain out, and felt lives a fraction of the tile's span. A revival era roof can therefore be simultaneously handsome, structurally sound, and at the end of its waterproof life, a sentence no street view can read.
The trade's honest instrument is the lift: a course raised at an eave or a valley, the felt read directly, its flexibility and surface stating its remaining years. That read, priced as an inspection, is what separates the two remedies Alhambra homeowners are quoted. A lift and relay, tile stored and relaid over new felt, buys the covering another generation. A detail patch over spent felt buys a season and a second bill.
The discipline is to demand the layer in writing. Every Alhambra roof quote should declare whether it prices tile, felt, flashing, or some combination, and the inspection behind it should report each layer's age separately. The tile will still be beautiful. The question the quote has to answer is what is holding the water out beneath it.
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