Roof leaking: what do you do now and who pays for the repair?

With a leaking roof, the first hour is almost entirely about limiting damage, not about repairing. The repair can wait until it is dry; the damage to your ceiling, floor and electrics cannot.

1. If water is running along a light fitting, a socket or the meter cupboard, switch off that circuit at the consumer unit. Water and electricity together is the only genuinely acute danger here.
2. Put buckets down and lay towels or a sheet underneath. A bucket on a hardwood floor helps nothing if the water splashes past it.
3. If the ceiling or plaster is bulging, pierce a small hole at the lowest point with a screwdriver and put a bucket under it. That sounds wrong but is not: a sagging ceiling that suddenly tears causes far more damage than a hole you make yourself.
4. Move things that can be damaged and pull furniture away from the spot. Electronics, paper and a wooden floor are the expensive items.
5. Take photos and video with the date, from above and below: the wet patch, the bucket, the state of the weather if it is stormy. This is your evidence later for the insurer, the landlord or the owners association.
6. See whether you can spot anything from inside, for example in the loft or a roof void. A wet trail on the roof boarding often points to the leak better than the stain in the ceiling.
7. In continuing rain, call a roofer for an emergency repair, and ask explicitly about the out-of-hours surcharge before he comes. If the rain has stopped, it can simply wait until tomorrow.
8. Ventilate and let it dry once the leak has stopped. A ceiling that stays wet grows mould within two weeks.

Water runs along the structure under a roof before it falls. It creeps across roof boarding, along a rafter or over a pipe and then drips down at the first point where it can go no further. A leak showing up indoors near the window regularly sits metres higher outside, or on the other side of the ridge.

So the wet patch is a clue, not an address. A roofer who glances at your ceiling and tells you where it is, is guessing. Someone who first looks in the loft and then goes up on the roof, is searching.

Rain driven in at an angle tells you more than vertical rain. If it only leaks during a storm from one direction, the problem is probably in a junction that only lets water through in driving rain, for example a dormer or a wall abutment.

If it leaks when it is not raining, it is not the roof. Condensation under a poorly ventilated roof, a leaking heating pipe or a blocked rainwater downpipe all give the same picture. Close every tap and read your water meter again two hours later: if it has moved, it is a supply pipe and not the roof.

On an ordinary Dutch roof the great majority of leaks come from a handful of places, and some of those you can already check from the ground with binoculars.

• Junctions and edges. Chimney, dormer, roof window, the abutment against the neighbour's wall. That is where the lead or zinc sits, and it is the first thing to fail after thirty years.
• Shifted or broken tiles after a storm. From wind force 9 roof tiles and chimney cowls blow off, but a tile that was already loose shifts at far less.
• Seams and laps on a flat roof. Bitumen and plastic membranes let go at the seam, and you only see it once water stands there. A puddle still present after two days is a clue.
• Blocked gutters and downpipes. Water that cannot escape stands, then finds its way in along the roof edge. This is the cheapest cause to prevent and the most common one people skip.

Of all the jobs in guides like this, this is the one where doing it yourself can genuinely be dangerous. Falls from height are the most common cause of serious accidents in construction, and a pitched roof is slippery the moment it is wet.

Never go up during or just after rain, snow or frost, and certainly not in wind. Even wind force 6 is far stronger on a roof than at street level.

Do not go onto a pitched roof without a roof hook, without ladder security and without a second person at ground level. A ladder against a gutter is not a workplace.

Do not go onto a flat roof whose construction you do not know, certainly not an old timber roof or one with rooflights. Falling through a rooflight happens more often than you would think.

Stay away from asbestos. Corrugated sheets on a shed or garage from before 1994 often contain asbestos. Do not drill, saw or run a pressure washer over them. Separate rules and a certified company apply there.

Stop searching yourself once the leak is still unfound after two attempts. At that point leak detection with a camera, smoke or thermal imaging is cheaper than another round of guessing and repairing.

Not every leak is a repair costing hundreds of euro, and it is fairer to say where you can finish the job yourself.

Cleaning the gutter from a properly set ladder at ground floor level. Getting leaves and moss out of the gutter and downpipe solves a surprising share of leaks, and it is half an hour of work in autumn.

A shifted roof tile you can put back by hand from a roof window or dormer. If you cannot reach it without stepping onto the roof, this is no longer a DIY job.

A rooflight or roof window with a dirty seal: clean it and see whether the leak stops. Often it is not broken but clogged.

Letting the ceiling dry indoors and only repairing afterwards. Plastering or painting straight over a wet patch brings the same stain back within six months.

What you do not solve with a tub of tar or roof coating is a leak in the seam of a flat roof. That temporary smear lasts a season at best, and the roofer has to strip it off later, which makes the real repair more expensive.

If you own a house, the roof is yours and you pay, unless an insurance policy covers it. There is no authority that steps in here.

If you live in a flat, the roof is common property in virtually every deed of division, as are the facade and the foundation. Repair is then a matter for the VvE, the owners association, and is paid from the reserve fund. A VvE is required to reserve for major maintenance, either following a multi-year maintenance plan or with at least 0.5 percent of the rebuild value per year.

So always report a leak in a flat to the VvE or the managing agent first, not straight to your own insurer. Damage to the building runs through the VvE's buildings insurance, damage to your own belongings through your contents insurance.

If you rent, the roof is major maintenance and therefore the landlord's. Report it in writing with photos and ask for repair; in an emergency you can ask for an urgent repair. Do not call a roofer yourself without reporting it, because you will often be left with the bill.

If the landlord does nothing, you can go to the Huurcommissie, the Dutch rent tribunal. A leaking roof falls into the heavier categories of defects there, and the Huurcommissie can lower the rent temporarily until it is fixed. A report to your municipality's building and housing inspectorate can run alongside it.

This is where most of the disappointment sits, so here is the sharp line. Buildings insurance covers damage from a sudden, unexpected event. It does not cover wear or deferred maintenance.

• Covered: consequential damage after a sudden cause. If tiles blow off in a storm and rain then comes in, the water damage to ceilings and walls is normally covered.
• Insurers speak of a storm from wind force 7, which is 50 to 61 kilometres per hour. The KNMI itself only calls it a storm from wind force 9, 75 to 88 kilometres per hour. In case of doubt the insurer checks KNMI wind data for your location and date.
• Storm damage often carries a separate, higher excess, usually around 200 to 250 euro. Some insurers let you buy that down.
• Not covered: damage because you did not maintain the roof, wear of bitumen or lead, and a construction fault. Slowly penetrating damp through the facade is excluded as standard too.
• Usually not covered either is the repair of the roof itself. The insurance pays for the consequential damage indoors, you pay for the tile or the seam. That distinction is rarely printed large in a policy and surprises almost everyone.
• Your own belongings fall under contents insurance, not buildings insurance. Report both if the ceiling and the furniture are wet.
• Do not repair first and report afterwards. Insurers may pay less or nothing if the damage has already been fixed before they could look. Photograph, then report.

A simple spot repair, for example refitting a few tiles or sealing a seam, costs 200 to 500 euro including labour and materials. That is one to two hours of work on site.

A roofer's hourly rate is between 35 and 50 euro for ordinary work; call-out and waste disposal together come to roughly a tenth of the total. What makes 2026 different: material prices have stabilised, but labour and arranging safe access have become the largest item. So when a roofer is there, have the gutter, the junctions and the tiles checked at the same time. Same man, same ladder, far less money than a second visit.

Clear gutters and rainwater outlets in autumn, after leaf fall, and again in spring. This is the cheapest roof maintenance there is and it prevents one of the most common leaks.

After every storm, walk round the house with binoculars and look for shifted tiles, loose ridge tiles and lead standing proud. It takes five minutes and you see the problem before it rains.

Have the lead and zinc work around chimney and dormer checked every five to ten years. That is where old roofs usually fail, not in the roof surface itself.

On a flat roof, check whether puddles remain. Water still standing after two dry days means the fall or the outlet is wrong, and sooner or later that becomes a leak.